that nothing is lefs favourable to enquiries after truth than a fyftematical fpirit, and fhall call to mind the faying of a Hindu writer," that who"ever obftinately adheres to any fet of opinions, may bring himself to "believe that the fresheft fandal-wood is a flame of fire:" this will effectually prevent me from infifting, that such a God of India was the JUPITER of Greece; fuch, the APOLLO; fuch, the MERCURY: in fact, fince all the caufes of polytheifm contributed largely to the affemblage of Grecian divinities (though BACON reduces them all to refined allegories, and NEWTON to a poetical disguise of true hiftory), we find many JOVES, many APOLLOS, many MERCURIES, with distinct attributes and capacities; nor fhall I prefume to fuggeft more, than that, in one capacity or another, there exifts a ftriking fimilitude between the chief objects of worship in ancient Greece or Italy and in the very interesting country, which we now inhabit.

The comparison, which I proceed to lay before you, muft needs be very fuperficial, partly from my fhort refidence in Hindustan, partly from my want of complete leifure for literary amufements, but principally because I have no European book, to refresh my memory of old fables, except the conceited, though not unlearned, work of POMEY, entitled the Pantheon, and that so miferably tranflated, that it can hardly be read with patience. A thousand more strokes of resemblance might, I am fure, be collected by any, who fhould with that view peruse HESIOD, HYGINUS, CORNUTUS, and the other mythologists; or, which would be a shorter and a pleasanter way, fhould be fatisfied with the very elegant Syntagmata of LILIUS GIRALDUS.

Difquifitions concerning the manners and conduct of our fpecies in early times, or indeed at any time, are always curious at least and amusing; but they are highly interefting to fuch, as can fay of themselves

with CHREMES in the play, "We are men, and take an intereft in all "that relates to mankind :" They may even be of folid importance in an age, when fome intelligent and virtuous perfons are inclined to doubt the authenticity of the accounts, delivered by MOSES, concerning the primitive world; fince no modes or sources of reasoning can be unimportant, which have a tendency to remove fuch doubts. Either the first eleven chapters of Genefis, all due allowances being made for a figurative Eastern ftyle, are true, or the whole fabrick of our national religion is false; a conclusion, which none of us, I trust, would wish to be drawn. I, who cannot help believing the divinity of the MESSIAH, from the undisputed antiquity and manifeft completion of many prophefies, especially those of ISAIAH, in the only perfon recorded by history, to whom they are applicable, am obliged of course to believe the fanctity of the venerable books, to which that sacred person refers as genuine; but it is not the truth of our national religion, as fuch, that I have at heart: it is truth itself; and, if any cool unbiaffed reafoner will clearly convince me, that MOSES drew his narrative through Egyptian conduits from the primeval fountains of Indian literature, I shall esteem him as a friend for having weeded my mind from a capital error, and promise to stand among the foremost in affisting to circulate the truth, which he has afcertained. After such a declaration, I cannot but perfuade myself, that no candid man will be displeased, if, in the course of my work, I make as free with any arguments, that he may have advanced, as I fhould really defire him to do with any of mine, that he may be disposed to controvert. Having no system of my own to maintain, I fhall not pursue a very regular method, but shall take all the Gods, of whom I discourse, as they happen to prefent themselves; beginning, however, like the Romans and the Hindus, with JANU or GANE'SA.

VOL. I.

K K

The

The titles and attributes of this old Italian deity are fully comprized in two choriambick verfes of SULPITIUS; and a farther account of him from OVID would here be fuperfluous:

Jane pater, Jane tuens, dive biceps, biformis,

O cate rerum fator, O principium deorum!

"Father JANUS, all-beholding JANUS, thou divinity with two heads, "and with two forms; O fagacious planter of all things, and leader "of deities!"

He was the God, we fee, of Wisdom; whence he is reprefented on coins with two, and, on the Hetrufcan image found at Falifci, with four, faces; emblems of prudence and circumfpection: thus is GANE'SA, the God of Wisdom in Hindustan, painted with an Elephant's head, the fymbol of fagacious difcernment, and attended by a favourite rat, which the Indians confider as a wife and provident animal. His next great character (the plentiful fource of many fuperftitious usages) was that, from which he is emphatically styled the father, and which the second verfe before-cited more fully expreffes, the origin and founder of all things: whence this notion arofe, unless from a tradition that he first built shrines, raised altars, and instituted facrifices, it is not easy to conjecture; hence it came however, that his name was invoked before any other God; that, in the old facred rites, corn and wine, and, in later times, incense alfo, were first offered to JANUS; that the doors or entrances to private houses were called Janua, and any pervious paffage or thorough-fare, in the plural number, Jani, or with two beginnings; that he was reprefented holding a rod as guardian of ways, and a key, as opening, not gates only, but all important works and affairs of mankind; that he was thought to prefide over the morning, or beginning of

day;