advises, with Jupiter, whofe fupremacy, thunder, and libertinifm, every boy learns from Ovid; while his great offices of Creator, Preferver, and Destroyer, are not ge -nerally confidered in the fyftems of European mythology. The Romans had, as we have before observed, many Jupiters, one of whom was only the Firmament perfonified, as Ennius clearly expreffes it: Afpice hoc fublime candens, quem invocant omnes This Jupiter or Diespiter is the Indian God of the visible heavens, called Indra, or the King; and Divespetir, or Lord of the Sky; who has alfo the character of the Roman Genius, or chief of the Good Spirits; but most of his epithets in Sanscrit are the fame with thofe of the Ennian Jove. His confort is named Sachi; his celeftial city, Amarávatì; his palace, Vaijayanta; his garden, Nandana; his chief elephant, Airávat; his charioteer, Mátali; and his weapon, Vajra, or the thunderbolt: he is the regent of winds and fhowers; and though the Eaft is peculiarly under his care, yet his Olympus is Méru, or the north pole, allegorically reprefented as a mountain of gold and gems. With all his power he is confidered as a fubordinate Deity, and far inferior to the Indian Triad, Brahmá, Vishnu, and Mahadeva or Siva, who are three forms of one and the fame Godhead: thus the principal divinity of the Greeks and Latians, whom they called Zeus and Jupiter, with irregular inflexions Dios and Jovis, was not merely Fulminator, the Thunderer, but, like the deftroying power of India, Magnus Divus, Últor, Genitor; like the preferving power, Conservator, Soter, Opitulus, Altor, Ruminus; and like the creating power, the Giver of Life; an attribute which I mention here on on the authority of Cornutus, a confummate master of mythological learning. We are advised by Plato himself to fearch for the roots of Greek words in fome barbarous, that is, foreign, foil; but, fince I look upon etymological conjectures as a weak bafis for historical inquiries, I hardly dare fuggeft, that Zev, Siv, and Jov, are the fame fyllable differently pronounced. It must, however, be admitted, that the Greeks having no palatial sigma, like that of the Indians, might have expreffed it by their zéta, and that the initial letters of zugon and jugum are (as the inftance proves) eafily interchangeable. Let us now defcend, from these general and introductory remarks, to fome particular obfervations on the refemblance of Zeus or Jupiter to the triple divinity Vishnu, Siva, Brahmá; for that is the order in which they are expreffed by the letters A, U, and M, which coalefce, and form the myftical word O'M; a word which never escapes the lips of a pious Hindu, who meditates on it in filence. Whether the Egyptian ON, which is commonly fuppofed to mean the Sun, be the Sanscrit monofyllable, I leave others to determine. It muft always be remembered, that the learned Indians, as they are inftructed by their own books, in truth acknowledge only One Supreme Being, whom they call Brahme, or the Great One, in the neuter gender; they believe his Effence to be infinitely removed from the comprehenfion of any mind but his own; and they fuppofe him to manifeft his power by the operation of his divine fpirit, whom they name Vishnu, the Pervader, and Nárayan, or Moving on the Waters, both in the mafculine gender, whence he is often denominated the First Male; and by this power they believe that the whole order of nature is preferved and fupported: but the Védantis, unable to form a distinct idea of brute matter independent of mind, or to conceive that the work |