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turn from his expedition into India. From the place of his birth, on the borders of the Hellespont, he is sometimes named Hellespontiacus. His naked figure is indecent, but as god of vineyards and gardens, he is found there with a head resembling that of a satyr placed on columns or termini.

We are told that Isis, having recovered all the dispersed members of her husband Osiris, excepting those of manhood, she consecrated a semblance of them, and ordained that it should be worshipped.

As the Hindus depend on their children for performing those ceremonies to their manes, which, they believe, tend to mitigate punishment in a future state, they consider the being deprived of progeny as a severe misfortune, and the sign of having offended the deity. By no people are duties towards the dead ever more strictly observed, or the effects of performing or neglecting them, more religiously believed, than by the Hindūs. The care of them is the obligation of the eldest male child, or in failure of male children, of the nearest male

relation. As with the Greeks, it is the elder surviving relative, who lights the funeral pile.*

Married women wear a small gold Lingam tied round the neck or arm; and worship is paid to Lingam to obtain fecundity.

The priests who devote themselves to the service of this divinity, swear to observe

*The author, happening to be at Rajahmundry, the capital of the province of that name, was visited by a Hindū; who was returning from a pilgrimage to Benares, whither he had gone to perform certain religious ceremonies for the benefit of the soul of his deceased father. He was a man of rank and fortune, and had come from Surat on the gulf of Cambay, across the peninsula, striking to the north. From a journal which he communicated, it appeared that he had visited Oudeapour, Oujein, and other places that are respected by the Hindus. He had been to offer his devotions also at the temple of Jaggernaut, on the coast of Orixa; and, when the author saw him, was on his way to visit that of Seringham near Trichinopoly, whence he proposed to return to Surat. It would be difficult to ascertain the number of miles he had travelled, as during his journey, several of the places he visited, led him into great deviations from the common route.

inviolable chastity. They do not, like the priests of Atys, deprive themselves of the means of breaking their vows; but were it discovered that they had in any way departed from them, the punishment is death. Husbands, whose wives are barren, send them to worship Lingam at the temples; and it is supposed that the ceremonies on this occasion, if performed with proper zeal, are generally productive of the desired effect.

In the accounts of the festivals of Rama, and others of their demigods or heroes, a strong resemblance may be observed with those of Hercules and Theseus.*

The Hindus, like the Greeks and Romans, have their household gods as well as their genii and aerial spirits. The Greeks ascribed the diseases to which men, and even cattle, are exposed, to some angry god, or

* See on the subject of the Hindu, Greek, and Italian divinities, the notes of M. Langlès to the translation of the first two volumes of the Asiatic Researches into French, vol. i. p. 273.

evil genius. The Hindus do the same. Pythagoras pretended that the evil genii not only caused diseases, but frightful dreams,*

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In India, as formerly in Greece, every wood and mountain, every fountain and stream, is sacred to some divinity. Nullus enim locus sine genio est, qui per anguem plerumque ostenditur."+ The great rivers claimed beings of superior order; the rivulets and fountains had those of inferior rank. Three goddesses of the waters, highly venerated, and from whom three celebrated rivers take their names, are-Ganga, "who sprang, like armed Pallas, from the head of the Indian Jove; Yamuna, daughter of

* Diogenes Laertius in Pythag. tom. ii. p. 900. (edit. Longolii).

† Servius in Æneid.

"The Hindu mythology has animated all nature. It has peopled the heavens, the air, the earth, and waters, with innumerable tribes of imaginary beings, arrayed in tints borrowed from the fervid imaginations of tropical climes,"-Edinburgh Review, vol. xvii. p, 315.

All

Surya, or the sun, and Sareswati. three met at Prayaga, thence called Triveni, or the three platted locks; but Sareswati, according to the popular belief, sinks under ground, and rises again at Triveni near Hugli, where she rejoins her beloved Ganga."* The Brahmaputra, as the name expresses, is the son of Brahma; and that noble river, the Krishna, is sacred to Krishen, the incarnate Vishnu. It would be almost endless to enumerate the various sacred streams.

"We have mentioned the Lotos as being highly venerated by the Hindūs. It is particularly sacred to Lacshmi, the wife of Vishnu, in her attributes of Sris, goddess of plenty, who presides over the harvests. She is sometimes represented holding a Lotos in her hand; at others sitting on one; and by poets she is frequently denominated Padma-Devi,+ tha, goddess of the Lotos, Padma being one of the Sanscrit

* Jones.

+ Mr. Wilford however ascribes that epithet to Cali.

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