is frequently seen attending on Siva and Parvati in the bowers of Kaylassa, when his employment is to fan his parent deities with a chamara of feathers, while Nareda plays before them on his vina, accompanied by the heavenly choirs.

Thus I have given you a short list of the principal deities of Hindostan, which will be suffi cient for the understanding of such ceremonies as you are most likely to see performed in India; but you must expect to find a different name, or at least a different pronunciation of the name, in every district for the same divinity. The selftorturers, who as fakirs, sanyassees, &c. will sometimes shock your sight, are commonly votaries of Siva or of Parvati, under some one of their various names. The celebrated temple of Jaggernaut or Jagganat'h, which at its annual feast presents, perhaps, the greatest abuses that ever disgraced a religious institution, has received its full measure of reprobation. The charitable feast, where, contrary to the laws concerning caste, all Hindûs are not only permitted but commanded to eat together, is, perhaps, the only pure remnant of the ancient institutions of the temple. And if the frenzy of superstition casts the votaries of the god under the wheels of his carriage to meet a glorious death, it is to the fanaticism consequent on the persecutions which the long wars that brought about the change of

religion in India produced, that it must be attributed. Crishna, who is the same with Jagganat'h, abolished the sanguinary sacrifices required by Rudra and Cali. He in his turn was deified, and the enthusiastic self-devotion of the poor Hindû who prostrated himself before the car of the merciful power who had arrested the sacrifice of his children, may account, on principles not totally unworthy of our nature, for actions which seem to be at war with that nature itself. I am aware that the account I now send you of the Indian mythology may deserve the censure which one of the ablest oriental critics pronounced on a certain elaborate work, that it is but a "Bazar account of the Hindû theology." But I could not, if I would, have given you a deeper insight into it without entering upon topics which would have led me far beyond the limits I had prescribed to myself, and which, as they would have been useless to you, would have been disagreeable to me.

There is one portion, however, of this mythology which is blended with the history of India, and which I will enlarge upon. It may be compared to that of the heroic ages of Greece, namely, that of the several Awatars of Vishnu, or his incarnations and descents upon earth. The first of these Awatars refers to that universal deluge, of which the tradition is preserved by all

nations. Here the preserving deity in the form of a large fish (Matsya Avatara) is fabled to have watched over and preserved the boat of the Menu Satyavrata, during the deluge occasioned by the wickedness which degraded all mankind after they had lost the holy books of laws given them by Brahma.

The second Awatar is that of Koorma, or the Tortoise, which has also a reference to the deluge. The good things of the creation having perished in the waters, the immortals wished to renovate the earth, and for this purpose Vishnu became a tortoise, and supported on his firm back the Mount Meru, or the north pole, while the deities placing round it the great serpent of eternity, gave it a rotatory motion so as to agitate the milky ocean, whence sprang innumerable good things, but seven were pre-eminent: the moon, the elephant *, the horse †, a physician, a beautiful woman ‡, a precious gem, and Amrita, or the water of life, which was drunk immediately by the spirits, so that man still

* Mythologically this elephant had three trunks, and is the favourite of Indra.

+ This was the seven-headed horse of Surya or the Sun.

This woman is often said to be Lacshemi, or Camala, when she is like the popular Venus, and is the chief of the Apsaras or graces, who, however, are more akin to the inhabitants of Mahomet's paradise.