Pandus under his protection, he conducted the cruel war which I mentioned in speaking of the kings of Magadha. The private adventures of this god have furnished the pastoral and lyric poets of India with their most fruitful subjects. The beauty and affection of his consort Rad'ha, the friendship of his attendant Nanda*, the demigod's various and numerous amours and wanderings, are all celebrated with enthusiasm by his votaries, a considerable sect of whom, the Goclast has, acknowledge no deity superior to him.

Great part of the history of Crishna bears a resemblance to that of Hercules t; the persecutions of his youth, his triumphs over different monsters, and the wars in which he was engaged, may all be compared to the adventures of the Grecian hero, while the pastoral life of Crishna Govind'ha resembles that of Apollo Nomius, and his appellation of Cesava, the beautifulhaired, comes sufficiently near to that of the

* Some say that as Crishna was an incarnation of Vishnu, Rad'ha was a form of Lacshemi, and Nanda was the great serpent Ananta Naga in a human shape.

+ The wars of Crishna changed the religion of part of India, and substituted for the sanguinary sacrifices required by Maha Deo and Kali, offerings of images in lieu of human victims, and milk for blood. Hercules also substituted images of clay for the human victims offered on the altars of Saturn.

golden-haired Phoebus. But like Apollo, Crishna was the patron of music and song; he is often represented playing on a reed, while the nine Gopis dance round him in a circle on the Mount Goverdhana, the Hindû Parnassus; and sometimes he appears surrounded with twelve pairs of dancers, representing the twelve months, the youths being the dark and the maidens the light fortnights, while he himself designates the Sun or Surya, like Apollo in his character of Phoebus.

Like Vishnu and all his Awatars, Crishna is represented of a dark blue colour, with the large bee of the same hue hovering over his head, splendidly dressed, adorned with chaplets of flowers and jewels, and holding a lotus, or sometimes seated on a throne shaped like that flower. When he is not depicted in his human character, his numerous hands hold the weapons consecrated to Vishnu himself, and in short he has all the attributes of that deity.

Bhûd, the ninth Awatar, appears rather an adopted than a legitimate Brahminical divinity; unlike most of the other descents of the gods, he was not a warrior but a contemplative sage, and introduced many novelties into religion, especially holding the destruction of life in abhorrence, either for the purposes of sacrifice or food. His life so exactly resembles that of the founder of the Bauddha religion, that he is ge

nerally considered as one and the same with that lawgiver.

The tenth Awatar Kalkee is to come.

But

Campbell must announce him and his purpose.

"But hark! as bow'd to earth the Brahmin kneels,
From heav'nly climes propitious thunder peals!
Of India's fate her guardian spirits tell,
Prophetic murmurs breathing on the shell,
And solemn sounds that awe the list'ning mind,
Roll on the azure paths of ev'ry wind.

"Foes of mankind! (her guardian spirits say)

Revolving ages bring the bitter day,

When heav'n's unerring arm shall fall on you,
And blood for blood these Indian plains bedew;
Nine times have Brahma's* wheels of light'ning hurl'd,
His awful presence o'er th' alarmed world;
Nine times hath Guilt through all his giant frame
Convulsive trembled as the mighty came;
Nine times hath suffering mercy spar'd in vain,
But heav'n shall burst her starry gates again.
He comes! dread Brahma shakes the sunless sky
With murmuring wrath, and thunders from on high;
Heav'n's fiery horse, beneath his warrior form,
Paws the light clouds and gallops on the storm!
Wide waves his flickering sword; his bright arms glow
Like summer suns, and light the world below!
Earth and her trembling isles in Ocean's bed
Are shook, and Nature rocks beneath his tread!
"To pour redress on India's injur'd realm,
The oppressor to dethrone, the proud to whelm,
To chase destruction from her plunder'd shore,
With arts and arms that triumph'd once before,

*The poet is not incorrect; Brahma and Vishnu are one under; different forms.

The tenth Awatar comes! At Heaven's command,
Shall Seraswati wave her hallow'd wand!

And Camdeo bright and Ganesa sublime,
Shall bless with joy their own propitious clime!
Come, heav'nly powers! primeval peace restore,
Love! Mercy! Wisdom! rule for evermore !"

MY DEAR SIR,

LETTER XVII.

THE time of your sailing is now so near at hand, that this will be the last letter I shall have leisure to address to you in England, and I have pretty well exhausted my store of notes concerning the Hindûs properly so called. But you must be aware that the inhabitants of the peninsula of India, consist of many various sects and tribes, and that when we have enumerated the Hindûs and the different European nations who have settled on their coasts, we are far from having completed the list of the inhabitants of Hindostan. We may divide them into the Christian, Jewish, Mussulman, and Parsee tribes, besides those sects derived from the Brahminical faith.

From the time that the spirit of navigation and commerce began to revive in Europe, some faint reports of a Christian empire in the East, which some placed in Abyssinia, others in In

dia, and all agreed to call the country of Prester John, had excited the curiosity of the Western states; and many missions were sent to discover that desirable country, supposing it to contain, if not the garden of Eden, at least, that happy place where Enoch, Moses, and St. John awaited in their earthly bodies the day of judgment. Its riches were imagined to be as admirable as its government, and all together to realize the fables of the Happy Islands.

Accordingly when the Portuguese found on the western coast of India a few villages inhabited by the remains of a settlement of Nestorian Christians, they were persuaded that they were soon to fall in with the country of Prester John, and it was only when they discovered that these poor creatures were heretics who did not acknowledge the Bishop of Rome, that they remanded Prester John to Abyssinia, and set to work to convert the new Christians, by the gentle modes of the inquisitions established at Goa and elsewhere, to the true Roman Catholic faith. They have succeeded; and at the time I was in India, I confess, that the ceremonies I saw performed in the Catholic churches, appeared to me scarcely less contemptible, than those of the neighbouring pagodas. It is impossible to conceive a more degraded form of Christianity than that commonly professed by