obedience which every Jesuit owes to the head of his Order, can possibly permit his becoming, with good faith, a dutiful subject of the civil state. It is a gross fallacy to allege that the government of either the Pope or the General of the Order of Jesuits, is spiritual. Secular interests and secular policy are identical with both of them. On the oath of allegiance, as applying to the Jesuits, the Author's remarks, Vol. I. p. 336, are worthy of being recommended to the attention of the reader.

The morality of the Jesuits, which received the most complete exposure from the wit and eloquence of the Provincial Letters, is of the most criminal character, adapted to sanction vice in all its gradations, and to harden the heart in the practice of iniquity, by the apologies for sin which the arts of its patrons have devised.

At one time, excuse is suggested by what is called invincible ignorance; at another, by the want of actual consideration of the evil of the action; on some occasions, the particular direction of the intention is to be regarded; at others mental reservation is permitted. Sometimes, the authority of some learned Doctor shall qualify the nature of a crime; at other times, the great secret of the Doctrine of proba bility shall explain away its intrinsic evil on some occasions the lawful ness of the pleasures of sense, as considered in themselves, is maintained; and their excess alone is held to con. stitute the crime which is prohibited. In this manner, almost every transgression against divine or human laws disappears; usury and duelling are sanctioned; debauchery is commonly no other than a venial sin; defamation and slander, vengeance and murder, are only the lawful results of a justifiable defence; the procuring of abortions under certain circumstances, only an allowed protection of character; theft but an authorized way of procuring justice; perjury, no other than the innocent effect of a mere jeu-de-mots, by which a person has appeared to say what he never intended to say, and to promise what he never meant to perform.

MYTHOLOGY and Superstitions of the People of India.

(From the British Critic.)

The heaven of

Or the 330,000,000 of Indian gods, it is universally known, that Brahma, Vishnoo, and Shiva-the creator, the preserver, and destroyer--are the chief and source. As the circumstances and accommodation of the second seem better known than those of the two others, we shall give a short account of his place of residence and family comforts. Vishnoo, called Voikoont'hu, is entirely of gold, and is eighty thousand miles in circumference. All its edifices are composed of jewels. The pillars of this heaven, and all the ornaments of the building, are of precious stones. The crystal waters of the Ganges fall, from the higher heavens, on the head of Droovu, and from thence on the bunches of hair on the heads of seven Rishees in this heaven, and from thence they fall, and form a river in Voikoont'hu. Here are also fine pools of water, containing blue, red, and white water lilies. On a seat as glorious as the meridian sun, sitting on water lilies is Vishnoo, and on his right hand the goddess Lukshmu. This goddess shines like a continued blaze of lightning, and from her body the fragrance of the lotus extends eight hundred miles. But splendour in this case, as in many others, is no proof of domestic bliss; and the troubles and anxieties of Vishnoo's mind have turned him into wood. In the first place, this god has two wives, Lukshmu, the goddess of prosperity, and Suruswutu, the goddess of learning; and all Hindoos acknowledge, that it is a great misfortune for a man to have two wives, particularly if both live in one house. The learned goddess, as might be apprehended, torments him with constant talking; whilst the other divinity, the prosperous Lukshmu, is incessantly moving from place to place; on which account, the lord of Voikoont'hu, to save his ears, on the one hand, and his honour on the other, has metamorphosed binself into a piece of wood.

We give the following picture as a specimen of a goddess, who holds in

3

Hindoo mythology, the place which corresponds to that of Minerva, in the pantheons of ancient Greece and Rome. Her name is Kalee, and is represented as a very black female with four arms; having in one hand a scimitar, and in another the lead of a giant, which she holds by the hair. She wears two dead bodies for ear rings, and a necklace of sculls; and her tongue hangs down to her chin. The hands of several giants are hung as a girdle round her loins, and her tresses reach down to her heels. Having drunk the blood of the giants she has slain in combat, her eyebrows are bloody, and the blood is falling in a stream down her breast; her eyes are red like those of a drunkard. She stands with one foot on the breast of her husband Shiva, and rests the other on his thigh.

This is one of the most ferocious of Hindoo divinities, and is represented as taking much delight in bloody sacrifice. It is said in the Kalika Poorana, that the blood of a tiger pleases the goddess for one hundred years, and the blood of a lion, a rein-deer, or a man, a thousand but by the sacrifice of three men she is gratified a hundred thousand years. So fond, indeed, is Kalee of flesh and blood, that her votaries are occasionally seen draining their veins, and cutting slices out of their bodies, to present at her shrine ; saying, "Hail! supreme delusion! Hail, goddess of the universe! Hail! thou who fulfillest the desires of all! May I presume to offer thee the blood of my body, and wilt thou deign to accept of it, and to be propitious to me. Grant me, oh goddess! bliss, in proportion to the fervency with which I present thee with my own flesh, invoking thee to be propitious to me. Salutation to thee again and again, under the mysterious syllables ung, ung!"

But the most singular office of this cannibal idol is the protection of thieves and robbers, who regularly pay their devotions to her, under the hope of carrying on their mischievous designs, with safety and success. Connected with this superstitious notion, Mr.

Ward* tells the following anecdote, the circumstances of which seem to have fallen under his own personal observation.

"Some time ago, two Hindoos were executed at Calcutta for robbery. Before they entered upon their work of plunder, they worshipped Kalee, and offered prayers before her image that they might be protected by the goddess in the act of thieving. It so happened, that the goddess left these disciples in the lurch; they hanged. While under sentence of death,

were detected, tried, and sentenced to be

a native catholic, in the same place and circumstances, was visited by a Roman' Catholic priest to prepare him for death. These Hindoos now reflected, that as Kalee had not protected them, notwithstanding they had paid their devotions to her, there could be no hope that she would save them after death; they might as well therefore renounce their cast: which resolution they communicated to their fellow prisoner, who procured for them a into the Bengalee language. I saw a copy prayer from the Catholic priest, translated of this prayer in the hands of the native catholic, who gave me the account. These men at last, out of pure revenge upon Kalee, died in the faith of the Virgin Mary, and the Catholics, after the execu tion, made a grand funeral for them; as these persons, they said, embraced the Catholic faith, and renounced their cast from conviction."

Every one knows that the worship of a Hindoo is extended to every object which meets his eyes in the heavens above, in the earth beneath, and in the waters under the earth; to the the and the stars; to cattle, sun, moon, and all creeping things; to dogs, cats, and monkeys; to serpents, to jackals, to eagles, cormorants, and bats; to rivers, and standing pools of water; to vegetables, shrubs, and trees; to which last only, in our opinion, their cow-dung oblations can be of no avail. Nay, they even proceed farther than this; for we are told by M. Dubois, that the several orders of mechanics and tradesmen offer religious respect to their tools and implements. The joiner does homage to his hatchet, the mason to his trowel, and the farmer to his plough. Women are seen worshipping the basket in which they convey their goods to market,, performing

* View of the History, Literature, and Religion of the Hindoos.

"We found," says Mr. Ward, two mendicants from the upper provinces, one of them a young man, an Oordhuvahoo, who had held up his left arm till it was become stiff. They were both covered with ashes; their hair clotted with dirt, and tied in a bunch at the top of the head; and were without any covering, except the bark of some tree, and a shred of cloth drawn up betwixt the legs. At a distance they could scarcely be distinguished as men; and it appeared almost impossible for human beings to manifest a greater disregard of the body. We asked the young man how long he had held up his arm in this manner. He said, for three years. To the question whether it produced any pain, he replied, that as far as his body was concerned, it did so for the first six months. The nails of this hand were grown long like the claws of a bird of prey. The other pilgrim was less communicative, but more intent on his devotions: he had a separate hut, and, as though all desire of human society and friendship was extinguished, these persons, the only human beings in this part of the forest, seemed to have no connexion with each other. At a distance from the temple we saw a wild hog, and on the sand, in several places, the fresh marks of the feet of a large tiger. The young man informed us,with perfect indifference, that during the three preceding months, six persons had been taken away by tigers; and added, in the same tone, that the human body was the natural food of the tiger, and that such a death was no mark of the divine displeasure. We asked him, whether he did not think it a fortunate circumstance, however, that while so many of his companions had been devoured by tigers, he was spared. He did not appear to feel this sentiment, but said, that they

would take him also."

The next instance of these halfalive devotees, who sigh for absorption, is related on hearsay evidence.

"Some years ago, an European of Calcutta, with his Hindoo clerk, was passing through the Sunderbunds, when he saw an object, which appeared to be a human being, standing in a hole in the ground. He asked the clerk what this could be, who affirmed that it was a man. The European went up and beat this lump of animated clay till the blood came, but the person did not appear conscious of the least pain; he uttered no cries, nor manifested the smallest sensibility. The European was overwhelmed with astonishment,and asked what it could mean. The clerk said, he had learned from his Shastras, that there existed such men called Yogees, who were destitute of passions, and were incapable of pain. After hearing this account, the merchant ordered his clerk to take the

man home. He did so, and kept the man some time at his house. When fed he would eat, and at proper times he would sleep, and attend to the necessary functions of life: but he took no interest in any thing. At length, the clerk, wearied with keeping him, sent him to his spiritual teacher at Khurdu. Here some lewd fellows put fire into his hands, placed a prostitute by his side, and played a number of other tricks with him, but without producing the least impression. The teacher, too, soon became tired of his guest, and sent him to Benares. On the way, when the boat one evening lay to for the night, this Yogee went on shore; and while he was walking by the river side, another religious mendicant, with a smiling countenance, met him; they embraced each other, and were seen no more.”

Mr. Ward calculates, that the number of mendicants, self-tormentors, and the torments of society, exceeds two millions, deriving a subsistence, miserable and precarious, from the industry of their countrymen, and propagating, by example and precept, every species of immorality.

But the rage for absorption, and the superstitious hope of purchasing future happiness by present pain, induce many not only to relinquish social life, but even to meet death by a deliberate act of suicide. A young man, of the order of Dundees, who lived at Kakshalee, upon finding himself growing a little too fat and wanton, and recollecting that a person of his profession was bound to lead a life of mortification and self-denial, resolved to renounce his life in the waters of the Ganges. He requested his friends to assist him in this act of selfmurder, and they accordingly supplied him with a boat, some cord, and two water-pans. He then proceeded in the boat into the middle of the stream, and, filling the pans with water, fas tened one to his neck, and the other round his loins, and in this manner descended into the water, to rise no more, in the presence of a great number of applauding spectators. A Brahmin informed Mr. Ward, that in the year 1806, whilst on a visit at Pruyaga,

selves, in the course of two months, he saw thirty persons drown themnearly in the manner just described. It is very common too, when those miserable fanatics find themselves at

tacked by disease, to relinquish life in hope of a speedy and permanent cure. One of our author's friends witnessed the drowning of a leper who had despaired of recovery; and another was present at the burning of an individual, at Cutwa, who was afflicted with the same distemper. The circumstances attending the latter case of religion, are thus described, in a letter bearing date 1812.

"A pit, about ten cubits in depth, was dug, and a fire placed at the bottom of it. The poor man rolled himself into it; but instantly, on feeling the fire, begged to be taken out, and struggled hard for that purpose. His mother and sister, however, thrust him in again; and thus a man, who to all appearance might have survived several years, was cruelly burnt to death. I find that the practice is not uncommon in these parts."

The notion entertained by the Hindoos, that a person who dies a natural death, under a loathsome or incurable disease, shall, after four births, appear once more on earth, a victim to the same malady, induces many to undergo a violent dissolution; whilst, at the same time, the purifying effects of fire are imagined to be so extremely powerful, as to prepare the soul for an immediate transmigration into a healthy body, and afterwards, in due time, for a complete absorption into Brahma.

So much has been said and written on the practice, still in some degree prevalent in India, of women being burnt alive with the corpses of their husbands, that it might seem almost superfluous to take notice of it here. Mr. Ward, however, has not only entered into a minute detail of these immolations, but he has also brought forward some authorities from the sacred books or Shastras, upon which the horrible usage seems to be founded. It is said, for example, in the Rig-Vedu,

"O Fire, let these women, with bodies anointed with clarified butter, eyes coloured with stebium, and void of tears, enter thee, the parent of water, that they may not be separated from their husbands, but may be in union with excellent hus bands, be sinless, and jewels among

women."

In other works it is written as follows:

"There are 35,000,000 of hairs upon the human body. The woman who ascends the pile with her husband, will remain so

many years in heaven. The woman who expires on the funeral pile of her husband, purifies the family of her mother, her father, and her husband. If the husband be a brahmanicide, an ungrateful person, or a murderer of his friend, his wife, by burning with him, purges away his sins. Though he have sunk to the region of torment, be restrained in dreadful bonds, have reached the place of anguish, be seized by the imps of l'uma, be exhausted of strength, and tortured for his crimes; still, as a serpent-catcher unerringly drags a serpent from his hole, so does she draw her husband from hell, and ascend with him to heaven, by the power of devotion." "If the wife be within one day's journey of the place where the husband died, and signify her wish to burn with him, the burning of his corpse shall be delayed till her arrival and if the husband be out of the country when he dies, let the good wife take his slippers (or any thing else which belongs to his dress) and binding them or it on her breast, purify herself, and then enter a separate fire."

Mr. Ward calculates, that the number of women who fall victims to this superstitious phrensy every year, within thirty miles of Calcutta, exceeds four hundred. Dubois* informs us, however, that the practice is greatly on the decline; that the Brahmins have entirely discontinued it in their own order, although they are still found to preside at all such tragical proceedings. We shall give a description of one of these inhuman orgies in the words of the latter author; as he happened to be present, and has noted all the circumstances with great accuracy and exactness.

"The first instance that fell under my observation, was in the year 1794, in a village of Tanjore, called Podupetta. A man of some note there, of the tribe of Komati, or merchants, having died, his wife, then about thirty years of age, resolved to accompany him to the pile, to be consumed together. The news having quickly spread around, a large concourse of people collected from all quarters to witness this extraordinary spectacle. When she, who occupied the most arrived to bring away the corpse and the conspicuous part, had got ready, bearers living victim. The body of the deceased highly ornamented with costly stuffs, garwas placed upon a sort of triumphal car, lands of flowers, and the like. There he A Description of the Characters, &c. of the People

of India.