Brahma, or rather he is the appointed agent in their exhibition or expansion. In this mighty work he is represented by some writers as exhausting his powers and unable to proceed. By others, again, he is said to have performed the severest austerities in order to gain power for his undertaking. The tears he shed in despair of being able to accomplish his task are said to have produced a race of hobgoblins that nearly scared him out of his senses. By him the worlds were peopled. The seven inferior worlds are tenanted by savage giants, hydras, huge snakes, among whom Sheshanaga, the thousandheaded serpent, holds a conspicuous place. His head is crowned with starry gems, and his eyes gleam like blazing torches. The superior worlds are occupied by gods, goddesses, and genii, of every order. The superior deities dwell in separate worlds; and the inferior ones chiefly in the heaven of Indra, the god of the firmament. They are said to number three hundred and thirty millions. They are divided into different orders. They hold diversified offices, and perform various functions, and their power extends throughout the universe. They can assume any form and wield any weapon, and even become embodied in anything; hence the advantage which the epic writers have in their great works. You have the god of wisdom, of folly, gods of war, of peace, gods of good, and gods of evil, of pleasure and delight, who shed on their votaries every imaginable enjoyment. There are, too, gods of cruelty and wrath, who must be sated and appeased with blood, and regaled with the shrieks and groans of expiring victims. All things, according to the theory of Hinduism, are placed under the control and guidance of these beings. Everything, animate and inanimate, every function of the physiological system of humanity, breathing, musing, gaping, every joy and every sorrow, all our conduct and its issues, every scene and every object, even the most trivial are supposed to be under their providence and control. Hence the chirping of a lizard, the screeching of an owl, the flight of a bird, a cloud, a fugitive leaf, an empty vessel, a word con

M

gratulatory of health, a harsh sentence, a look, nay, almost every circumstance, according to this system of multiplied. and multiform preternatural agency, is made to wear an aspect for good or evil.

The manner in which our world was peopled has been already stated in the paragraphs on Caste. It may, however, be necessary to add, that according to the chronology of the Hindus, the present world is destined to last upwards of three hundred billions of common years. This period is divided into four ages, that correspond in some degree with those of the Greeks and Romans,-the golden age, the silver, the brazen, and the iron ages. We are now represented as being in the iron age, an age of corruption, of debasement, and we are told that about half of its period has expired. About half of the entire series of years that constitute the life of Brahma, or the duration of the universe, has passed away.

The Hindu writers speak of disturbances and disorders in the course of one of these ages, that arise from the vices of mankind. In the first age, the true, they are indeed pictured as wholly virtuous, but as time rolls on mutations occur, and floods and storms are sent to punish men for their vices. These catastrophes are spoken of as affecting only our own earth, which, after the administration of righteous retribution is again repeopled and replenished by a virtuous. race preserved by a miraculous interposition of Deity. Such was the deluge. But there are other changes occurring at wider intervals. At the end of the great Kalpa, a long day of Brahma, extending through the space of four thousand million years, he is said to repose, and then comes the long night of darkness and inaction, equal in length to the day he has just ended. Then an universal deluge takes place; the seven lower, and two of the upper worlds, are submerged, when Brahma, assuming the form of Narayana, one moving on the waters, reclines on the serpent Ananta, or Eternity, and reposes in long and awful slumber. Then the vicious of all worlds perish, but the righteous, the immortals, the

divine sages, and all orders of celestial beings, with Indra, the king of the firmament, ascend into the fourth of the superior worlds. Others that have been distinguished for their virtue, may ascend still higher, and, unaffected by the catastrophe that has overtaken those in the inferior abodes, enjoy happiness till the day of Brahma dawns, when the course of events already detailed is repeated, and on the gloom disappearing, and the flood subsiding, the world, with its animate and inanimate organizations, again appears. But a period will arise, according to the Hindu writers, at the end of one hundred years of Brahma's life, when the Maha Pralay, the great destruction of the entire universe will take place, and the worlds and all things shall be reduced to absolute nonentity.

At that momentous period the process of emanation or development that has been described, will be reversed, and by a gradual refluence all things will return again to the fount of being. All the visible and corporeal forms throughout the world will be reduced to the elements of which they are composed. The grosser elements will be reduced into the rudimental elements. These in succession will infold themselves into their respective sources, and thus the terrene becomes igneous, and that aqueous, aerial, and etherial, and melting away into the principle of consciousness; and in like manner the eleven organs, or instruments of sense and action. Consciousness is then absorbed in the mass of intellect, and this into the essence of the Supreme Brahm from which it proceeded. Then all spirits of every class and degree are re-fused into the supreme, the imperishable and eternal. Then all that is visible and invisible, everything ceases to exist by being wholly re-absorbed in the eternal impersonal essence of the Supreme Spirit. Time ceases, and the reign of undefined silence and darkness begins. Then throughout illimitable space nothing will remain but the sole, the self-existent incomprehensible Brahm. Yet this essential and eternal one will again conceive the thought and cherish the volition

described, and the same mighty scene shall be unfolded. Every succeeding universe is but the repetition of that which preceded it. Evolution and involution, effluence and refluence, succeed each other as day and night, or as the tree and seed, the seed and tree alternating in unbroken succession through the never ending and measureless eternity that is to come. This is the unalterable law of being which has existed from eternity. This is the Hindu theory of the universe. From all eternity past, that ever had a beginning, and to all eternity to come in a boundless progression, shall the Supreme Essence thus expand and disappear at intervals of inconceivable and measureless periods, in a series of alternations that shall never end. Such is the theory of Brahmanism in its most popular aspects. This system is by its advocates entitled the Vedanta, a word literally meaning the "end, essence, or purport" of the Vedas, from an affectation on the part of the Brahmans to connect it with those venerable records. Its great authorities are really the Upanishads, which are apocryphal appendages to and not parts of the Vedas.

CHAPTER IX.

HINDU THEORY RECAPITULATED.

CONDITIONS OF THE SOUL.-RITES,

SACRAMENTS.-DAILY WORSHIP OF THE BRAHMAN.-WORSHIP OF THE SUN.-OTHER RITES AND OBSERVANCES.-CHIEF OBJECTS OF WORSHIP.NEW DIVINITIES.-CONFIDENCE OF THE HINDU IN HIS RELIGION.

THE theory of the universe briefly but comprehensively stated in the preceding chapter, will prepare the way for further detail in regard to the condition of sentient beings, and especially man. We have seen how souls launched on the ocean of individuated beings are educed from the Supreme Essence or Source of existence, and what their final destiny is. As sparks or rays of light, they are separated from deity, and becoming individuated beings, subject to moral rule, capable of good or evil, and therefore liable to the retributions incident to the moral qualities and actions of which they are the subjects. We have seen how the soul is incased in certain subtle sheaths, wherein it passes through varied conditions in the course of its progress in the metempsychosis, subject, as its moral deserts may determine, to the organizations through which it may, for purposes of discipline, be necessitated to pass, whether in the form of viviparous, oviparous, or germiniparous being. Not only does the soul assume the condition of organized being in this world, but it also visits other worlds when it drops the gross body with which it may have been associated, and there receives the recompence of its deeds, or suffers the penal consequences of moral action. The vicious fall into the regions of torment, and in the realms of Yama they are