and absurd as are the dreams in which that imaginative race delights to indulge respecting it, there is reason to think that they were once much better acquainted with that system. They have the six planets known to the ancients, and corresponding to the same number admitted by us: they divide the Zodiac into twelve signs, of which only four differ, and that but slightly, from those of modern astronomy. Thus Gemini is represented by a husband and his wife ; Sagittarius by a bow; Capricornus by a deer, and Aquarius by a water-pot, The number and names of these signs, as well as of the planets, are doubtless derived from the ancient Chaldeans, the great founders of astronomy. When the ancient languages of India are better understood, and its rich and almost exhaustless mines of literature are better explored, the ancient connexion between the eastern and western provinces of Asia will probably be explained, and much light thrown on the general history of the world. The Sakwalla is inhabited by gods, demons, and men; and these three orders, like the universe itself, have existed from eternity. No creator or supreme governor is explicitly either acknowledged or conceived. Gods and devils, like man, come into existence by ordinary parturition; and, like him, they are subject to death. The gods are benevolent in their nature, but they have no power over either men or devils. They are too much occupied with the enjoyment of their own happiness in the twenty-four kingdoms above Mahamera, even to cast a thought on the affairs of this world. Hence, since they are unable to procure good, or to avert evil, they are not admitted as objects of devotion. On the other hand, the devils are malignant, and their whole employment and delight consist in punishing the wicked in their native hells, or in causing mischief to the inhabitants of the earth. Sometimes they proceed so far as to make war even on the gods; but they are not able to contend with the latter, and often receive the reward due to their wickedness and presumption. Among both gods and devils, there are numerous degrees of subordination as on earth, and all dignities are hereditary. The chief god, however, whose name is Budhu, was (as will be hereafter stated) once a man, who attained deification by means of his virtue. The chief devil holds his dignity by right of succession: he is inferior in talent, and consequently in power of mischief, to the deceased king, his father. This inferiority is sufficiently accounted for by the circumstance that the prince had only attained his eighth year, and had never been taught to read, when his father died. Thus the "books of might" which the latter left behind him, are unintelligible, and consequently useless, to the former; nor can they be understood by any of his numerous subjects. He has two wives; but whether he has children or not does not appear. Man, like the other two orders, is an independent being: he is not accountable for his actions to any tribunal: he has no need of a judge either to reward or to punish him; for virtue inevitably leads to happiness and vice to misery. He is not indebted to the gods for his enjoyments, either here or hereafter; and his defence against the assaults of a devil consists not in their power, but in his own virtue. When he dies, he enters the body of some beast, bird, fish, or insect, and the new state of being is also a state of probation. Good men pass into some noble, powerful, happy animal, and are preserved from misfortunes, pain, and violent death, by the necessary force of their prudence and virtue. Bad men, on the contrary, inhabit the bodies of vile animals, and are constantly exposed to suffering. But if the former commit any wicked action, while animals, they unavoidably migrate into one of less dignity and safety; and the latter may, by good actions, rise higher in the scale scale of being. If a good man dies, and in a subsequent stage of existence loses the virtue which he acquired while under the human form, he descends, -like the guilty, to the lower and more wretched gradations of animal being, and can re-ascend only by reformation: so that the wicked man may improve by suffering, and rise to an animal of dignity and happiness. The eastern sages have ever held suffering to be the great instrument of moral improvement; and they apportion the degree of it to the guilt which has been incurred. The greater this guilt, the more weighty the punishment,—or rather, the more poignant the pain which is reserved in another change. The same soul continues its transmigrations for countless millions of years, and in that period often returns to animate the human form. If, during the greater number of the preceding changes, it has advanced rather than retrograded in goodness, it appears in a respectable rank in life, and is inevitably happy: we must not, however, infer that every transmigration of a good soul is necessarily through noble animals. It often enters one of little dignity, but then its existence is always happy. Hence the wretched on earth have nothing to blame but their own crimes: they may be assured that in their preceding transformations they have been more wicked than virtuous. The fortunate and the happy (who must, however, always be good or this rule will not apply,) may justly infer the contrary. Thus, by this system, the wicked have innumerable opportunities of penitence and reformation, and the good of preserving and of encreasing their stock of virtue. After proceeding during so many ages through all the changes which their vice or virtue dooms them to undergo, both the former and the latter finally assume the human form-those to lead a wretched, these a happy life. At the conclusion of this life, those are necessarily conducted to the first hell, and these to the lowest heaven. But here it must be observed, that none are conducted to hell so long as there remains a possibility of reformation; none but those whom future discipline on earth would harden in guilt rather than amend.* When the soul has become so habituated to vice as to have imbibed its very nature,-when this fatal principle has gained the whole ascendancy, then indeed all future probation would be useless; that soul is no longer a free agent, and it is therefore seized by Yama-rajah, the king of death, and conducted to the only place for which it is fit. This brings us to some account of those dreadful places of punishment, or rather of expiation, so dreadful that the human imagination has never in its wildest excursions discovered any thing so horrid,-so overpowering even to the firmest mind. The Narakadayas, or hells, are, as we have before observed, one hundred and thirty-six in number. The first of these is that in which the punishment is the mildest, and its duration the shortest. This hell is a fiery region, in the middle of which arises a tree of immense extent, whose branches are of redhot steel, and sharp as bayonets, or even swords. On these, the wicked are without intermission tossed by the Yacas, or devils, who are themselves free from pain; and there the bodies of the former are continually pierced until the arrival of the time appointed for their removal to the second hell. The duration of punishment in the first is fifty years, each year equivalent to one hundred of ours. At the conclusion, then, of five thousand years, the wicked enter * When a soul has become so hardened in iniquity as to bid defiance even to the purifying tortures of life (which, however, is very seldom the case), it joins the society of devils, and becomes one of their number. Some time ago a very wicked native chief expired, whom the priests have raised to a high rank in the infernal community. enter the second Narakadaya, where they are doomed to remain twice the time, and to endure twice the severity of pain, of the first In this hell they suffer perpetual amputation, their limbs being perpetually renewed. At the expiration of ten thousand years more, they enter the third hell, where they remain twenty thousand years, and endure double the punishment of the second. Thus they proceed through all the hells, each succeeding one encreasing the punishment and time of the former in a two-fold ratio, until all the torments which the ingenuity of devils can devise, have been exhausted. The time occupied in passing through this succession of hells is beyond the power of imagination to conceive, or of numbers to express: perhaps as many millions of years as there are grains of sand on the sea-shore. By this time the empire of vice is thought to be destroyed,—the inherent depravity to be rooted out, and the soul sufficiently purified for the lowest of the Devi-lokayas. Here it meets with the good who have improved their virtue through their various transformations; and who, on leaving the human body, have naturally and necessarily resorted to this place of happiness. Thus the worst, after their infernal purgation, acquire the same advantages as the best. The species of happiness enjoyed by the good (under this term may now be comprehended those who have been purified in the hells) in the lowest heaven, differs not so much in kind as in degree from that of the earth. They have here the company not only of men, but of the gods who are natives of the place. Here both gods and men remain until they are so far improved in virtue as to be fit for the second heaven, or Devi-lokaya, which is as superior in happiness as in station to the heaven below. Thus they ascend in dignity as in enjoyment, until they have passed through the eighteen kingdoms. They then enter the lowest of the Brachma-lokayas, a state of happiness far superior to that of the Devi-lokayas. While ascending through these six kingdoms, they throw off not only every remains of moral imperfection, but even of passion and of sensation; so that after abiding for a time in the highest Brachma-lokaya, they are rendered fit for the supreme state of bliss in Nerawāna. Here is no sensation, no perception: here is total extinction of being; and to this both gods and men are equally subject.* Of Budhu, the chief deity, and the founder of this system, the reader will wish to know something. The meaning of the word is goodness. There have been several of the name, but they had all entered Nerawana before the deification of the present one. All were deified, not by any superior power, but as an unfailing consequence of their extraordinary virtue in every stage of their existence on earth. In the former ages of the world men were exceedingly wicked, and deplorably ignorant of the truth. The devils had fixed their abode on earth, had married with the daughters of men, and were become so numerous and powerful that they kept the world in chains. Thus things continued until about two thousand years ago, when there appeared a prince named Goutama, whose father was a powerful king in Jambud-dweepa, and who was destined, as we shall soon perceive, to be the great benefactor of manhind. The life of this prince was one of perfect virtue. He had passed through five hundred and fifty transmigrations, in all of which he had preserved the same tenor of undeviating rectitude * It has frequently been contended that Nerawana is not extinction of being, but of passion, and that Budhus are represented by the Burmans as existing in that blissful region. The proper meaning of the term, however, is, without life, and the greater number of the priests, especially those of Ceylon, think that every soul is annihilated on its entering Nerawana. To reconcile these contradictory opinions would be a useless attempt. rectitude. His wisdom and virtue under every change, may be seen in his life, which is comprised in fourteen books, and which, if translated, would require as many ample quartos. His perseverance in goodness during so many millions of years necessarily procured him extraordinary wisdom and power. During his last abode on earth, he continued to exercise himself in doing good. When he had attained his sixteenth year, his father died, and he succeeded to the kingly office. He made all his subjects happy: his kingdom was a little heaven. But his benevolence was too great to be confined within the narrow bounds of any one country: it embraced the whole earth. He therefore resigned his dignity, after reigning thirteen years, and passed the next six as a pilgrim. At the conclusion of his thirty-fifth year, his perfect virtue naturally and inevitably produced his deification, and he became Budhu. He afterwards travelled over the whole of Jambud-dweepa, teaching mankind the truth, making proselytes, and appointing disciples, who diligently committed his doctrines to writing. At length he arrived at Ceylon, but that island was so full of devils that he could not land: there was not room sufficient for the sole of his foot. Budhu challenged them all, on condition that he might be allowed to set one foot on the island. The devils, ignorant of his deification, and probably despising such an antagonist, granted his request. But they had immediate reason to repent of the concession: the god resorted, not to material, but to spiritual weapons, and such was the efficacy with which he wielded them, that he drove away the infernal hosts: not a Yaca could withstand his doctrine. Thus he proceeded in his divine career on earth, until he reached his eightieth year, when he ascended to the lowest heaven. Through the thick mist of fable and absurdity which surrounds this being, some real personage may evidently be seen. Budhu was, beyond all doubt, the founder of the religion which bears his name, but his original simple doctrines must have borne little affinity to the complicated system which his knavish and imaginative followers have invented. The foundation was once simple, and perhaps as secure as uninspired genius could lay it; but the superstructure is enormous in its dimensions, and hideous in its design. Happily this cumbrous, and monstrously disproportioned edifice is giving way: of this the priests themselves are well aware. The zealous labours of Christian missionaries, labours which are little known in Europe, but which will doubtless be rewarded in heaven, have done much to dispel the gross darkness of the island. In a very short space of time miracles have been effected: schools have been established, and Christian communities formed; and the prevailing force both of civilization and of religious truth, promises to overcome all opposition from the priests of Budhuism, and to render that beautiful island a most valuable appendage of our Indian empire. The progress of Christianity derives considerable support even from the superstitions of its adversaries. Budhu is believed to have passed through all the Devi-lokayas, and nearly all the Brachmalokayas he is therefore rapidly approaching the end of his existence, the blissful Nerawāna, which he is expected to enter soon after the middle of the present century. A new dispensation of religion will then be necessary, and there is reason to hope that the Christian is that which is destined by an All-wise Providence to supply the place, and to annihilate that monstrous system : * In one of his transmigrations he became a species of vulture, whose nature is to prey on inferior animals. Budhu, however, overcame every temptation of his natural appetite. One day he perceived a fish which had been left in a pond by the subsiding water, and almost perishing for want of its natural element. The good vulture seized the sufferer, and conveyed it to a lake at some distance from the pond. system not in Ceylon only, but on the Indian continent, and eventually in all those vast Asiatic regions in which it is prevalent. We have said that the doctrines of Budhu were originally simple, and that the great mass of absurd fables with which they are accompanied, are the invention of his followers. This will appear evident from the simplicity of his precepts, which are diligently inculcated by his priests, and with which even the most ignorant are acquainted. These precepts are, like the divine com、 mandments, ten in number, but five of them are not applicable to mankind in general, but relate to the discipline of the priests. The five universal precepts are the following :— First. Pranag'hata nokarawa, Thou shalt not take away life. Third. Paradarakam nokarawa, Thou shalt not commit uncleanness. Fifth. Soori nobewa, Thou shalt not drink intoxicating liquors. W. AFRICAN WAR-SONG. THE following characteristic verses were taken down in writing by Capt. Clapperton, from the mouths of two bards, who sung them in responses at the head of a body of horsemen belonging to the Governor of Katagum, in Central Africa : Give flesh to the hyenas at day-break : Oh! the broad spears. The spear of the sultan is the broadest: I behold thee now-I desire to see none other. Oh! the broad spears. My horse is as tall as a high wall: Oh! the broad spears. He will fight against ten, he fears nothing: Oh! the broad spears. He has slain ten-the guns are yet behind: Oh! the broad spears. The elephant of the forest brings me what I want: Oh! the broad spears. Like unto thee-so is the sultan : Oh! the broad spears. Be brave! be brave! my friends and kinsmen : Oh! the broad spears. God is great! I wax fierce as a beast of prey: Oh! the broad spears. God is great!-To-day those I wished for are come: |