allusion to the husband of sixteen thousand wives. But his being placed among the giants somewhat obscures it; though, at pages 246 and 248, the Asvini are praised for having restored a lost son, Vishnapvan, to his father, a son of Krishna. Thus, while in the one case merit attended the destruction of his offspring, in the other it attended their preservation.

One trait in the character of the Preserver is very remarkable. Hinduism carries the doctrine of supererogation to such lengths, that ascetics may gain merit, not only sufficient to cover their own sins, and to benefit other mortals; but sufficient also to give them fearful powers, which, at discretion, may be turned even against the gods. When one of these holy men threatens the celestials, nothing can rescue them, but to deprive him of his merit by leading him into sin. Thus, in order to seduce men of transcendant piety, the Preserver has several times become a teacher of error. Of these abominable missions, the Purana wholly devoted to the praise of Vishnu supplies the following example. The gods after a severe defeat piteously appealed to Vishnu, saying: "Have compassion on us, O Lord, and protect us who have come to thee for succour, from the Daityas. They have seized upon the three worlds, and appropriated to themselves the offerings which are our portion, taking care not to transgress the precepts of the Vedas. .... Engaged in the duties of their respective orders, and following the paths prescribed by holy writ, practising also religious penance, it is impossible for us to destroy them. Do thou instruct us in some device whereby we may exterminate the enemies of the gods." When the mighty Vishnu heard their request, he emitted from his body an illusory form, which he gave to the gods, and thus spake: "This deceptive vision shall wholly beguile the Daityas, so that, being led astray from the path of the Vedas, they may be put to death; for all gods, demons, or others who shall be opposed to the Veda, shall perish by my might, whilst exercised for the preservation of the world. Go then, and fear not let this delusive vision precede you; it shall this day be of great service to you, O gods!" In the case of Devodasa, given by Dr. Wilson, of Bombay, Vishnu is at much pains to corrupt the holiest of mortals; and at length succeeds.

.........

Of SHIVA, the Destroyer, it is not possible to say much without citing impurities better avoided. Wrath, lust, and filth are the sum of his character. In one of his wars, Mandara Purvata (the mountain on which the gods embarked) was his bow, a vast serpent the string, Vishnu his arrow, and for a shield, having split the earth asunder, he took one half. His repeated crimes brought upon him curses manifold and, some of them, unmentionable. His dwelling was among the ashes of the dead, his avocation begging, his robe a tiger's skin, his alms-box a human skull, and his rosary a string of skulls. Among his names are "the Furious," the "Hide-clad," the "Ugly-eyed," and the "Devil-king." Upon his character all the vices have exhausted their imagination; and yet, overflowing with impurities as that character is, his worship is the most ancient of the sectarian divisions in India, and perhaps even yet the most numerous. His office is to destroy all things; an event frequently occurring, according to Hinduism; occurring, indeed, whenever Bramha takes a sleep.* He seems to be fully recognised in his character of Destroyer in the Rig Veda.

*I do not attempt to give a view of Hindu cosmogony, as it would require much space, and is not a necessary part of their religion; though necessarily involving the credit of the Shastras.

"Slay not, O Rudra, (Shiva,) our old, nor our young, our unborn, (generans,) nor our newly-born, our father, nor our mother; nor afflict the bodies we love! In son, in grandson, in kinsman, in cows, or in horses, chastise us not; nor in anger smite our men, O Rudra! ......... Far from us be thy weapon which slays cows,* and slays men, O Destroyer of men! Be felicity accorded to us of thee; favour us, and undertake our cause, O God! O give us salvation!"

Each of the Triad has a heaven of his own; Indra too, has a heaven, and several heavens beside are mentioned. These abodes are thronged by three hundred and thirty millions of gods; in whose character is neither grandeur nor worth. They luxuriate in crime, and are frequently worsted in battle. Krishna called them "the vile and contemptible denizens of heaven," and also, "the evil-minded and unprincipled gods;" terms admirably characteristic. These gods are considered immortal, but not properly divine; except, indeed, as any object may be identified with the supreme spirit, and so be called divine. In the Canarese, and some other Indian tongues, though not in all, they are not called Dera, the name "God" as applied to the Triad and a few others; but Devita, "little gods," dii minores. You cannot, however, find two Bramhans who agree as to the number of celestials entitled to be called Deva. Of course, it is not attempted to give a catalogue of the Devita; and only a few, comparatively, receive separate worship. At certain ceremonies, and in urgent distress, they are invoked in mass.

Perhaps it may admit of doubt whether any of the gods receiving separate worship belong properly to the class of Devita, and whether they are not all of distinct orders; being either deified natural agents, deified men, deified animals, or else imaginary regents governing certain provinces, as Kumara, "God of war," and Vignagshvara, "God of difficulties." If this be correct, then the three hundred and thirty millions come from a corruption of the patriarchal doctrine of angels; and three processes have been employed to furnish the pantheon of divinities separately adored ;— PERSONIFICATION, applied at will to any inanimate object, even so low as moon-plant wine, but especially to the nobler ones, as the sun, moon, ocean, &c.; APOTHEOSIS, exercised not only on men, but also on beasts, birds, and reptiles; and INVENTION, resorted to when any class of facts had been observed, and it was deemed necessary to assign them a director. Such conceptions as Virgil's Fame, or Ovid's Envy, if put forth in India by good authority, would be generally accepted as models of goddesses. From conceptions similar, if not in poetry, at least in principle, have sprung the whole host of official gods; a class which includes even the Triad.

The debased and polluting idolatry to which these doctrines naturally lead, has been illustrated at length in former pages. It is now, therefore, only necessary to recall the fact, that the fair and spacious continent of Hindustan is inundated with idols,-idols from the size of an elephant to that of a bee; of every material, from gold to clay; and of every form, from monster to reptile;-idols in which all decency is outraged, and all modesty decried; idols which meet you at every turn, until you are ready to repeat the old satire on Athens, that it is more easy to find a god than a man. Then, with these loathsome claimants of divine honours are associated trees, hills, waters, Kings, husbands, Priests, and patrons, cows,

* Vaccans necans; this I take to be a misprint, for vaccas, and render it accordingly.

birds, snakes, and monkeys; and even implements of handicraft are addressed in prayer. Nor are these debasements confined to the ignorant and low. In the Vishnu Purâna we are told, that Krishna utters the following sentiments :-"Practical science is agriculture, commerce, and tending of cattle........ .Thus the knowledge of the means of support is threefold. The object that is cultivated by any one should be to him as his chief divinity; that should be venerated and worshipped as it is his benefactor......... We then" (he was a cowherd)" are bound to worship the mountains, to offer sacrifices to cattle. What have we to do with Indra? Cattle and mountains are our gods. Bramhans offer worship with prayer; cultivators of the earth adore their landmarks; but we, who tend our herds in the forests and mountains,, should worship them and our kine." (Page 524.)

Painful as is the darkness of the Hindu on the natural attributes of God, it is more painful still respecting His moral glories. Whether we take one god or another, celestial life or terrestrial incarnations, the primitive Veda or the modern Purana, in all we find the revolting alliance of divinity and pollution. It is safe to say that in the Puranic legends of the amours, envies, and errors of the gods, we have, from the creator down, a record of turpitude far exceeding that of any person in existence. Deeds we should blush to name are sung in lofty verse, and as the performance of glorious godhead. To excuse these monstrosities we are told that as to God "no actions affect him." Were it not that our eyes have light from above, this answer might blind us, as it does the astute Hindu, and like him we might forget that it is not the action which affects the agent, but the agent who affects the action, displaying his own character in the character he gives to his deeds. Laboriously and painfully does the Hindu set himself to prove that actions which in himself would be culpable, are in his god wise and pure. This one fact forcibly illustrates two scriptural declarations; namely, that the Heathen know not God; and that they have a law written in their heart. In their ignorance of God, they forget that principles too vile for man cannot be those of the Eternal; and by the law written on their hearts, they feel that to copy the supposed divine example would involve guilt. The truth, that a clean thing cannot be brought out of an unclean, has a sorrowful evidence in the fact that every effort of the human soul to evolve, independent of revelation, an idea of God, has only produced a huge being of eccentric power and blemished morals.

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The idea of God, as taught in the Shastras, is lamentably entangled and obscure; but as existing in the popular mind is even more so. They say, "God is one;" but when asked, Who? or, Of what character? some will reply, "The god at Shivagunga," some, Hanamunta," some, "GoobbeeAppa," some, "Runga," and so on. With the more intelligent the proposition, "God is one," is only the first of a series of propositions of which the last is, "There are gods many and lords many." One class, if they could analyze their reasoning, would state it thus: "God is one: this one Being is supreme; the Supreme must be perfectly happy; to be perfectly happy, he must be free from all care; to be free from all care, he must be unconscious: therefore God is free from consciousness, that is, he is for ever asleep. A being who is asleep does not govern the universe; but the universe is governed; and must be governed by some divine being; thus there must be some divine being who is not asleep, and consequently who is not the supreme." And then, it is easy to prove from the Shastras that the government of the universe is not in one hand, but in many;

therefore the gods are many. Another class arrives at the same conclusion thus: "God is one; from him sprang all things; He is in all things; so that on whatever we look, we look on God. It is false to say of anything it is not God, for nothing exists without God; therefore God is everything, and everything is God." Their views of God's omnipresence, though thus adequate as to extent, are wretchedly gross. Of omniscience they have scarce a thought: Para Bramha being ignorant that he is even asleep, and all the Shastras describing the highest gods as often in difficulties from ignorance, it is not wonderful that the people insist on the necessity of several gods; because, say they, no King could attend to a whole kingdom without provincial officers; so God cannot attend to all affairs without assistant deities. They sometimes worthily express omnipotence; but a moment after show that they have not any true conception on the subject; and indeed, even in the Shastras, halts, obstacles, and embarrassments retard every movement of alleged omnipotence, and impeded even the work of creation. When, even in the Shastras, the acts of deity constantly flow from, or are mingled with, what they themselves term, "foulness, passion, and darkness," we could only expect, what we find sadly realized, that in the thoughts of the people the deity stands apart from all idea of justice, fidelity, and truth. Yet they have universally the conviction, that sin will be punished; a conviction, however, taught chiefly by a voice quoting the sanctions of a law written on their heart. The idea of one great Being, holy and good, who is distinct from all He upholds, as His own light from all it beautifies, I never could discover in a Hindu mind. Others, beside theological observers, have been struck with the absence from Hindu piety of any sentiment like the love of God. Colonel Kennedy has said respecting the Shastras, "It is singular that such expressions as the love and fear of God never occur in those sacred books."

The doctrines concerning MAN are next in importance to those concerning God. It is affirmed on all hands that the Hindus have always taught the immortality of the soul. But in this statement immortality is confounded with future existence. The Hindus hold that the soul exists after death; but, in our sense, or in any true sense, they do not hold it to be immortal. To the idea of life, especially of spiritual life, both personality and consciousness are essential. By the immortality of the soul, we understand, that to all eternity the soul will exist as a real being; and therefore will for ever think, feel, and act. This the Hindus do not hold. Their doctrine is not the immortality, but the divinity, of the soul. The soul, according to them, is not a creature of God, which it is not His will ever to annihilate; but it is a part of God, which he has deluded into the belief that it is a separate being. In consequence of this delusion, it suffers; on quitting the present body it will enter another, there it will suffer also; and so on until, recovering from error, it will recognise itself as God, whereupon its sufferings and its consciousness will terminate, by re-absorption into the Supreme. To a soul, the termination of conscious existence is not only death, but annihilation: it would, therefore, be more correct to say that the Hindus believe in the divinity of the soul, than that they believe in its immortality.

The soul is, according to Hinduism, ever and only a part of God; and yet its condition after death depends on its merit in life. If virtuous, it may be born a goat or even a cow; if pious, a man; if saintly, a Bramhan;

* Quoted by Dr. Wilson.

if immoral, a cat, a tiger, a crow, or a bug. Its progress in holiness is followed by a progressive elevation of birth, till absorption crowns its reward. Thus, upon the whole earth, only one kind of living being exists; "all life is one." "A man, a woman, a cow, a goat, a horse, an elephant, a bird, a tree," (for some include vegetables with animals,) "are names," says the Vishnu Purâna, "assigned to various bodies which are the consequences of Man is neither a god, nor a man, nor a brute, nor a tree: these are mere varieties of shape, the effects of acts." This occurs in a passage often quoted by Bramhans in conversation with myself. The same Purana recites the history of a Prince, who, after death, was born a dog, then a jackal, then a wolf, then a vulture, then a crow, then a peacock, and finally a Prince again.

acts.

It will be observed that in this doctrine heaven and hell have no place. Sin is punished by repeated gifts of existence, and piety rewarded by privation of existence for ever. Had this doctrine prevailed from the beginbing, no such idea as that of heaven or hell would have existed. Yet allusions to those places of punishment and reward are of constant occurrence; nor do the sacred writers preserve their grand theory of transmigrations against frequent invasions of the older truth. For instance, the lot of the Prince, whose migrations we have just noticed, is described in terms wholly inconsistent with the dogma of absorption. "The King then, along with his Princess, ascended beyond the sphere of Indra, to the region where all desires are for ever gratified, obtaining ever-during and unequalled happiness in heaven." The same inconsistency pervades all their moral sanctions: for instance, the Vishnu Purâna, in one sentence, declares the punishment of an adulterer to be hell, and in the next to be birth as a reptile. To accommodate the theory of heaven and hell, with that of metempsychosis, they are sometimes represented as only temporary abodes, whence, eventually, the soul issues for a new round of births. But the existence of the names and idens of these worlds, with such expressions as those just quoted, "ever-during," and "for ever gratified," strongly indicate a theology which had formed language before the doctrine of transmigration was invented.

So definitively does the idea of heaven and hell exist among the Hindus, that a heaven is assigned to each caste, and terrible descriptions are given of hell. "The heaven of the Pitris," says Parasara, "is the region of the devout Bramhans. The sphere of Indra, of Kshetriyas who fly not from the field. The region of the winds is assigned to the Vaisyas, who are diligent in their occupation, and submissive. Sudras are elevated to the sphere of the Gandharbas. Those Bramhans who lead religious lives, go to the world of the eighty-eight thousand saints; and that of the seven Rishis, is the seat of pious anchorets and hermits. The world of ancestors is that of respectable householders; and the region of Bramha is the asylum of religious mendicants. The imperishable region of the Yogis (ascetic hermits) is the highest seat of Vishnu, where they perpetually meditate on the supreme being, with minds intent on him alone: the sphere where they reside the gods themselves cannot behold. The sun, the moon, the planets shall repeatedly be and cease to be; but those who internally repeat the mystic adoration of the divinity shall never know decay." This last sentence is a bold and express declaration of immortality; but it is not the doctrine of the writer by whom it was penned; as might be shown from numerous passages in his work in which it is declared that no state is "imperishable," and that the Yogis, so far from enjoying or desiring an