While I was enclosed within its ribs the sweet awen rendered me complete; and my law, without audible language, was imparted to me by the old giantess darkly smiling in her wrath; but her claim was not regretted when she set sail. I fled in the form of a fair grain of pure wheat; upon the edge of a covering cloth she caught me in her fangs. In appearance she was as large as a proud mare, which she also resembled, the Ceres-Hippa of the Greeks, who similarly received Bacchus into her womb; then was she swelling-out, like a ship upon the waters. Into a dark receptacle she cast me. She carried me back into the sea of Dylan. It was an auspicious omen to me when she happily suffocated me; God, the Lord, freely set me at large."

To a timid aspirant, the hierophant says, "Thy coming without external purity is a pledge that I will not receive thee. Take out the gloomy one. Out of the receptacle which is thy aversion did I obtain the rainbow."- -See Davis's Celtic Mythology.

It may seem widely wandering from Greece to Britain; but it only shows more strikingly the oneness of the pagan faith.

The priests, thus providing for the tastes of all parties, wealth, power, and unlimited influence became their own. All these things were sources of gain; and whoever would form some idea of the wealth of the Grecian priesthood, let him read in Herodotus of the immense riches conferred on the oracular temples by Cræsus and other monarchs. Let him also learn the following particulars from Diodorus Siculus: "The principal hordes of treasure, both in bullion and coined money, were in their temples, which were crowded with presents of immense value, brought by the superstitious from every part of Greece. These temples were considered as national banks; and the priests officiated as bankers,-not always, indeed, the most honest, as was once proved at Athens, where the state treasurers, having expended or embezzled the public money, had the audacity to set fire to that part of the

temple of Minerva where the treasure was contained; by which sacrilegious act that magnificent fane was near being wholly consumed. Their purpose, however, was fully answered, since the registers of the temple were reported to have perished with the treasures, and all responsibility precluded."

The temple just mentioned, the superb fane of Jupiter Olympius, at Elis, and that of Apollo at Delphi, were the principal of the three sacred depositories. The priests at all times concealed the total sum of the treasures lodged in them with too much caution for us to know the amount; yet, when the Phocenses, urged to despair by the exactions of the Thebans, seized on the treasures of Delphi, they amounted to 10,000 talents above 2,250,000l. sterling-and probably that was but a small portion of what holy perfidy had previously secured. The deposites at the great temple of Ephesus, considered through all ages as inviolable,, probably far exceeded those of the three last mentioned.

The spirit of avarice, which in all times characterized the priesthood, and prompted them to such immense accumulation, is not more detestable than dangerous; for, let any one reflect what must be the consequence to a nation where the monarch and the priest are in coalition, as is usually the case, and the monarch, as is usually the case too, is watching to extinguish every spark of popular freedom: what, I say, must be the consequence when such overwhelming resources are within his reach? The fate of Greece is a melancholy warning on the subject. These immense treasures were eventually seized upon by rapacious conquerors, and their soldiers paid by them to enslave these renowned states; and thus the coin drained from the people by the hands of priestcraft became in the hands of kingcraft the means of their destruction. So has it been in every country—in ancient Rome-in Constantinople; and so pre-eminently in India.

CHAPTER VIII.

INDIA.

India-Priestcraft in its boldest aspect-Doctrines-Sacrifices and licentious Rites-Women of the Temple-Immense Wealth accumulated by the Brahmins-Seized by the Arabians-Mahmoud of Gazna-Feast at Canaugha-Adventure at the Temple of Sumnaut-Eternal Slavery stamped by the Brahmins on the Hindoos by the Institution of Castes-Inviolable sanctity and immunities of the Brahmins-Sooders-Chandelahs-Remarks.

THE ancient and venerable Hindostan furnishes our last and most triumphant demonstration of the nature of pagan priestcraft. In Greece we have seen that, notwithstanding the daring, restless, and intellectual character of the people, it contrived to obtain a most signal influence; but in India, with a people of a gentler temperament, and where no bold spirits, like Homer and the philosophers of Greece, had ventured to make the national theology popularly familiar, priestcraft assumed its most fearless and determined air. In all other lands it did not fail to place itself in the first rank of honour and power; in this it went a step further, and promulgating a dogma diametrically opposite to the humanizing doctrine of the Bible, that "God made of one blood all the nations of the earth;" it riveted its chains indissolubly on the mind of that mighty empire. Priestcraft here exhibits a marvellous spectacle. The perfection of its craft, and the utter selfishness of its spirit, are proclaimed by the fact of millions on millions bound, from the earliest ages to the present hour, in the chains of the most slavish and soul-quelling castes, and in the servility of a religious creed so subtly framed, that it almost makes hopeless the moral regeneration of the swarming myriads of these vast regions. I have already repeatedly stated that it partakes, in common with the whole pagan

world, in one general mythological system, and I shall not dwell on its features more particularly. In Maurice's copious Indian Antiquities, whence I shall chiefly draw what I have to say, may be found ample details of the Hindoo religion. It is well known, from a variety of works, that this venerable empire claims the highest antiquity, not merely of national existence, but of the possession of knowledge in philosophy, literature, and the arts; it is equally known, too, since Sir William Jones laid open the antique stores of the Sanscrit language, that this religion has all the common features of those mythologies on which I have already dwelt. It has its triad of gods, its doctrine of metempsychosis, its practice of the Phallic licentiousness, and the horrors of human sacrifice and selfimmolation. Who has not heard of the burning of Indian widows-of the bloody and wholesale selfslaughter at the temple of Jaggernath-of the destruction of children, now restrained by British interference -and of the absolute dominance of the Brahmins? I shall pass, therefore, hastily over these matters, and confine myself principally to the task of displaying, in the Brahminical hierarchy, an example of priestcraft in its most decided, undisguised, subtle, and triumphant character,-priestcraft, at once in full flower and full fruit; in that state at which it has always aimed, but never, not even in the bloody reign of the papal church, ever attained elsewhere,-stamping itself on the heart of a great nation in the broadest and most imperishable style, in all its avowed despotism, icy selfishness, imperturbable pride, and cool arrogance of fanatical power.

Two great sects exist here, those of Buddh and Brahma, which preserve an inviolable separation, except in the temple of Jaggernath, where, seeming to forget all their former prejudices, they unite in the commission of lust and cruelty.

It is to the Brahminical sect, as the most predominant, that I shall principally confine my remarks. These profess the mildest of doctrines, refuse to kill

any living creature for food, and subsist on milk, fruit, and vegetables. Yet, what is at first sight most remarkable, and what cannot be accounted for by any other means than that of the immutable nature of corrupted religion, they not only inflict on themselves, under the character of Yogees, the most horrible austerities; but have for ages encouraged the destruction of female children; do to the present time encourage, and under the influence of the most powerful of social causes render almost necessary, the immolation of widows; sanction and stimulate, annually, thousands of simple victims to destroy themselves at the shrine of the monstrous Jaggernath; and, till recently, sacrificed, not only animals, but men.

Of human sacrifices, the express ordination of the Rudhiradhyaya, or sanguinary chapter of the Calica Purana, in the fifth volume of the Asiatic Researches, is sufficient testimony. No precepts can be conceived more express, nor, indeed, more horrible, than those which this tremendous chapter enjoins.

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By a human sacrifice, attended with the forms here laid down, Deva, the goddess Cali, the black goddess of destruction, is pleased 1000 years.

"By a human sacrifice, Camachya, Chandica, and Bhairava, who assume any shape, are pleased 1000 years. An oblation of blood which has been rendered pure by holy texts is equal to ambrosia; the head and flesh also afford much delight to Chandica. Let, therefore, the learned, when paying adoration to the goddess, offer blood and the head, and when performing the sacrifice to fire, make oblations of flesh."

Here follow numerous minute directions, none of which I shall quote, except one,-itself sufficiently horrid.

"Let the sacrificer say, Hrang, hring! Cali, Cali! O, horrid-toothed goddess! eat, cut, destroy all the malignant; cut with this axe: bind, bind; seize, seize; drink blood! spheng, spheng! secure, secure! salutations to Cali !"

For the Phallic contaminations, let this passage