Magi seem to have been an object of terror in some provinces; it was not probably till their power was firmly established, that the common and promiscuous tomb became universal, as from the testimony of Procopius and Agathias it appears to have done. In the instance of Euphrates, a Persian slave in a foreign country, who could not secure the ceremonies of his own religion to his dead body, requests that at least no more defilement of the elements should take place than was absolutely necessary: that the fire, the great object of reverence, should not be violated; that the water, which if it flows communicates pollution, or if restrained corrupts and diffuses it to the air also, might not be defiled; but that his body might be wrapped up and deposited in the earth, whereby the elements would suffer the least defilement.

It is from comparing these texts, therefore, that I am of opinion that the urns in question contained the bones of Persians, whose bodies were de posited in them while the usages described by Herodotus and the commentator on the Desâtêr were in force, before the whole of Persia was reduced to a strict observance of the religion of Zertûsht. In such inquiries, however, there is always considerable uncertainty, particularly when the inquiry relates to a country in which there were so many obscure heresies as there appear to have been in Persia at various æras of its history.

XV.

ACCOUNT OF THE CAVE-TEMPLE OF ELEPHANTA,

WITH A PLAN AND DRAWINGS OF THE PRINCIPAL FIGURES.

By WILLIAM ERskine, Esq.

Read November 2, 1813.

Few remains of antiquity in the East have excited greater curiosity than the cave-temples of the Hindûs. History does not record any fact that can guide us in fixing the period of their excavation, and many opposite opinions have been formed regarding the religion of the people by whom they were made. As nothing directly elucidating their origin or object can be gathered from history or tradition, it only remains practicable to form some probable conjectures on the subject, by a comparison of their present appearance, with such circumstances as we have been able to ascertain regarding the modern or more ancient religions of the Hindûs. And as some of these excavations have evidently been formed by men differing from each other in their mythological opinions, if we would examine them with any degree of success, for the purpose of discovering to which particular sect any one of them belongs, it is previously necessary to comprehend something of the various religions which have prevailed in this country.

It is well known that all India from the earliest times has been divided among three grand sects; the Brahminical, Bouddhist, and Jaina, all of them differing in their tenets and ceremonies.

The question regarding the relative antiquity of these different sects is one chiefly of curiosity. The Brahminical seems to establish the best claim to be considered as the most ancient. All of these sects, with many tenets in common, have also opinions that separate them widely from each other. The Brahminical religion, in its secret and esoteric doctrines, ap

proaches nearly to pure deism: but the popular faith is extremely different. The learned Brahmins adore one God without form or quality, eternal, unchangeable, and occupying all space; but they carefully confine these doctrines to their own schools as dangerous, and teach in public a religion in which, in supposed compliance with the infirmities and passions of human nature, the Deity is brought more to a level with our prejudices and wants; the incomprehensible attributes ascribed to him are invested with sensible and even human forms. The mind, lost in meditation on the divine nature, and fatigued in the pursuit of something which being divested of all sensible qualities suffers the thoughts to wander without finding a resting-place, is happy, they tell us, in the room of this unknowable and incomprehensible being, to have an object on which human feelings and human senses may again find repose. To give a metaphysical Deity to ignorant and sensual men, absorbed in the cares of supporting animal existence, and entangled in the impediments of matter, would be to condemn them to atheism. Such is the mode in which the Brahmins. excuse the gross idolatry of their religion: their mythology is a strange compound of popular stories, in the greater part of which a divine being assumes a human form and lives among men. The great supreme being, Brimh, remains in holy obscurity, and mythology is never allowed to profane his name, which is always kept free from fictions. Three energies however, the creative, the preserving, and destroying,-are embodied under the names of Bramha, Vishnu, and Shîva; to each of whom a female or passive energy is given: these have all human forms, diversified in various. ways by an active imagination; and as the two latter are supposed to have descended many times, to have been incarnated on earth in different ages and in various shapes, each different incarnation or avatar furnishes a different deity, to whom worship is addressed. Bramha alone of the three has no variety of incarnations, and is never worshipped. Some of these avatars are supposed to have been incarnations of the whole god; others. are only considered as incarnations of a portion of his divinity.

Besides these three great gods, however, there is a large crowd of minor deities. The wind, the sea, the elements, have their gods; the sun, moon,,

and stars, every river and fountain is either a deity, or has a deity to preside over it; nothing is done but by or through a god. The greater gods have besides a numerous class of dependants and servants; and human passions being once bestowed on the deities, heaven has its physician, its poet, and its dancing-girls as well as the earth.

In this great crowd of deities, there is no man, however capricious or humble, that may not find some divinity or portion of the divinity suited to his humour or self-humiliation. If a man find some difficulty in approaching Râm; that god's monkey servant, Hanumant, may however claim his worship: a little red paint thrown on a stone or the stump of a tree converts it into a god, and all the lower classes that pass fall down and worship.

Yet it deserves notice, that even in this apparent degradation of the human intellect, if you ask one of the lowest of these unfortunate beings how many gods there are, you will be immediately answered, One God only; and will I think discover, that though they pay religious adoration to stocks and stones, from some superstitious belief that a portion of divinity resides in them, they never confound these subordinate objects of worship with the one great God, the supposed creator and preserver of the universe, but whom they consider as too mighty for them to venture to approach.

When the Brahmins are taxed with idolatry, they always excuse themselves, as has been already remarked, by alleging the necessity of making an impression on rude minds by means of some intelligible symbols, on which the ignorant may fix their thoughts, and to which they may look for reward or punishment.

As in many of their incarnations the gods are supposed to have appeared with several heads, with the heads of animals, with a number of hands, and other singularities; their images in the temples correctly represent all these peculiarities.

All Brahminical excavations that I have observed are flat-roofed within, and most of them incline to a square, though they frequently have an oblong figure.

The religion of the Bouddhists differs very greatly from that of the Brahmins; as in the latter, God is introduced every where,—in the former; he is introduced no where. The gods of the Brahmins pervade and animate all nature; the god of the Bouddhists, like the god of the Epicureans, remains in repose, quite unconcerned about human affairs, and therefore is not the object of worship. With them there is no intelligent divine being who judges of human actions as good or bad, and rewards or pu· nishes them as such;-this indeed is practically the same as having no God, Good and ill, according to their creed, are however supposed to spring invariably from virtue and vice; there being as they believe an inseparable and necessary connexion between virtue and prosperity, vice and misfortune. Yet, as the mind of man must have some object of confidence, on which to rest its hopes and to which to direct its supplication and prayer, they teach that from time to time men of surpassing piety and self-denial have appeared on the earth, and from their singular worth have after death been transferred to a state of superior bliss; which state, however, they say that we can only intimate by describing it as an absence of all pain, as we can only define health as an absence of all disease. These saints or prophets, after reforming the world in their lifetime, and by their superior sanctity attaining the power of performing miracles, are still imagined after death to have certain powers of influencing us. It is these men transferred by death to bliss who are the object of Bouddhist worship. This worship assumes different forms in different countries, and is by some supposed to be more widely diffused than any other religion. In Siam it is chiefly paid to Godoma or Sommona-Codom: but it is worthy of remark, that wherever this form of religion prevails in its original state, the relics of these holy men or saints are the object of worship. The largest temples are often in the form of a pyramid or of the section of a globe, and are supposed to contain a tooth, hair, or other relic of the saint. The forms of these holy places have been adopted from the custom prevalent in these countries of depositing the ashes of the deceased under a pyramid or globular mound: the pyramids are often of great size, and on their summits are umbrellas which are frequently