The Shasters teach that the souls of the departed are divided into five classes. Those of the first class reunite with Brahm, the Eternal Spirit, and thus lose their individuality. The second are admitted to the various heavens of the gods. The third are punished in places of torment. The fourth again become the offspring of human parents. The fifth become beasts, birds, and insects. Hence, should a Hindu inhale an insect with his breath, he knows not but, in so doing, he has swallowed some departed relative possibly his own father. There is one sect, who, to prevent so horrid a catastrophe, wear a strainer over the mouth.

Hinduism leads its votaries into the wildest and most absurd vagaries in regard to omens, dreams, visions, evil spirits, and witches. In the vicinity of Puna, a person dreamed that the cholera, then raging in his village, was inflicted by a certain woman commissioned by Zurremurre, the goddess of the cholera. The villagers, on hearing this, immediately assembled and put her to death. In Orissa, a woman was told by her priest that Kali, the goddess whom she worshipped, had appeared to him in a vision, and had commanded him to inform her that she must sacrifice her only child. In the night, while he slept, she cut off his head, and gave it to the priest as an offering to the idol. In Nagpore, several persons died suddenly, which led many to believe that they had been destroyed by witchcraft. They therefore employed a man, who professed to be skilled in the art of magic, to discover the authors of their death. He put some oil and rice into a leaf, and began to repeat the name of each person belonging to the village. When he called the name of a certain woman, the oil, as he said, ran through the leaf. This circumstance was regarded as sufficient proof of her guilt. She was immediately seized, and whipped until death ended her sufferings. The death of the favorite wife of Rajah Zelim Singh, of Kotah, being attributed to witchcraft, he sentenced four hundred women to be put into sacks and thrown into a tank. It is stated by General Malcolm, in an official report, that, in the province of Malwa alone, in the course of thirty years, between two and three thousand females had been put to death for the imputed crime of

witchcraft.

Many of the Hindus believe that those persons who commit suicide become malignant spirits delighting in every kind of mischief.

The scene represented by engraving No. 53 occurred in Ghazepore. A man persuaded his wife to permit him to burn her alive, that her soul might be transformed into an evil spirit, for the purpose of haunting and tormenting one of their neighbors, who had offended them. In Calcutta, a servant, having quarrelled with his master, hung himself, in the night, in front of the street door, that he might become a devil and haunt the premises. The house was immediately forsaken by its occupants, and, though a large and beautiful edifice, suffered to go to ruin.

In Mirzapoor, a Brahmin took his own child, an infant about fifteen months old, from the arms of its mother, and, holding it by the legs, dashed its head against the ground, that it might become an evil spirit and torment a certain person by whom he imagined himself injured. Another little girl was, by her own father, beheaded with an axe. Another was stabbed to the heart, with a dagger, and her bleeding body thrown at the door of the person upon whom the murderer sought to be revenged. I could give the particulars of many other murders which have been committed for similar purposes.

"Among the customs of the Hindus, there is one which is called Dherna. If a man demands satisfaction from his neighbor for some grievous offence, if a creditor determines to pursue extreme measures with his debtor, to obtain what is due to him, - if a relative has been cheated by another out of his patrimony or his rights, and wishes to exact them from him, they respectively take the poniard or a cup of poison in their hand, and, knowing that the offending party is at home, they sit down at his door, in dherna. That moment the defendant within is considered as under arrest. He cannot touch food, so long as his accuser continues to fast; and, should he not come to terms, but drive, by his obstinacy, the plaintiff to despair, and allow him to use the dagger or drink the poison, his blood rests upon his head. This may be termed their ordeal- their mode of demanding satisfaction their system of duelling-their dernier resort.

"At the village of Pannabaka, in the presidency of Madras, there was a priestly Brahmin, who had lately come from Bellary, and had undertaken to attend upon the idol of the place. His was the privilege to levy contributions on the inhabitants for his sup