rejected, the Brahmin dominion over the consciences and fortunes of the Indians must inevitably fall to the ground. The consecrated land, or paradise of India, is next, with geographical precision, ascertained, and the SMRITI laws are declared to have been the immemorial usage of that favoured region, when man flourished in happiness and innocence.

The manner of educating the young Brahmin is now prescribed from his birth, and the minute attention paid, in every stage of that education, to cleanliness of person and vestment, evinces that the sacerdotal order of India, like those of ancient Egypt, consider the cultivation of health as no inconsiderable part of religion. They seem, also, to have laid it down as a maxim, that a pure soul cannot exist in an impure body, and that every new birth, in the fleshly tabernacle, conveys something more than a corporeal pollution. It is scarcely possible, consistently with decency, to detail their ideas on this delicate subject; yet must they not be passed over wholly unnoticed.

Thus, oblations to fire, that purifies all things, and holy rites on the birth of the child, expunge the seminal and uterine taints. Before the section of the navel-string, the infant Brahmin must be made to taste honey and clarified butter from a golden spoon. He must be named on

the tenth or twelfth day, at a lucky hour and under the influence of a benign star; a proof that they cultivated astrology at this early period in India. On the fourth month he is to be carried out to see and admire the SUN, the secondary god of his future devotion. In the second or third year, after his birth, the ceremony of tonsure must be performed; this was an old practice of the priests of Mithra, who, in their tonsures, imitated the solar disk. In the eighth year he is invested with the zennar, or sacred cord of three threads, in honour of the divine triad of India, Brahma, Veeshnu, and Seeva. He must afterwards put on a mantle formed of the hide of a black antelope; he must have a girdle, the zodiacal zone of the Mithriac priests, formed of munja, or cusa, grass; he must have a wand or staff of bilva or palass wood of such a height as to reach his hair, and the staff must be straight, smooth, and without fracture. Thus apparelled, and standing opposite to the sun, he must thrice walk round the fire from left to right, (a ceremony which fully proves the origin of the triple turn, sun-ways, of the Druids,) and then legally perform the ceremony of begging food of his relations. To explain this, I must observe that the Brahmin is always supposed to live by the charity of others, and to be a miserable mendicant in this transient world of sin and

sorrow. In another part of this chapter we are informed, that "the subsistence of a student by begging is held equal to fasting in religious merit." He must eat this eleemosynary food with his face to the east, and, having eaten it, he must thrice wash his mouth completely, and afterwards sprinkle, with water, his eyes, ears, and nostrils. Thus end the ceremonies indispensable to the infant Brahmin: let us attend him, in mature youth, to his studies and his preceptor.

He must observe the most rigid temperance, and, as he grows up, the most unsullied chastity, even in thought; or all his prayers, and all the instructions of his venerable tutor, will only inflame his guilt. He must attend his preceptor, arrayed in all the ensigns of his order; at the beginning of the lecture perform an ablution; read, or hear read, the Veda with hands devoutly closed; and, after the lecture, he must perform a second ablution, clasping, with both hands, the feet of the reverend father. He must, a thousand times in a day, if possible, pronounce to himself the mystic word oм (the fire of the solar orb). There is a wonderful potency in that word; it purifies, irradiates, and sublimes, the soul; it secures beatitude, and gains immortality. He must perform, for his tutor, the office of a servant without reward. By his hands the

consecrated wood, for the sacrificial fire, must be gathered; by his hand the flame kindled; he must carry the water-pots for ablution, the flowers, fresh earth, and cusa-grass, used in the sacred ritual; and, at intervals, intensely read the holy Veda, and implore food around all the district.

Nothing can be conceived more severe than. this state of servile pupillage, which continues to the twenty-fifth year; it shews the abject obedience in which the elder Brahmins hold not only the younger of their own order, but all the orders dependent upon them. Many of the stanzas, in this chapter, contain very excellent moral doctrines, though much overstrained. By others we are filled with sentiments of detestation and horror at the sanguinary interdictions contained in them, for the most trivial faults and the most pardonable sallies of youth. At the close of this long vassalage, the Brammassari, when he leaves his preceptor to return to his natural father, is subject to a mulct, and must gratify the avarice of the holy Indifferent with the best gifts in his power, a piece of land, a present of gold, a jewel, a cow, a horse, or some similar present. The ultimate reward, however, for this patient servitude, and voluntary munificence, is not a little flattering; for the last stanza declares, that "the twice-born

man, who shall thus, without intermission, have passed the time of his studentship, shall ascend after death to the most exalted of regions, and no more again spring to birth in this lower world."

CHAP. III.

In the third chapter are discussed the TIME and DUTIES of marriage.

Having passed through the state of pupillage, according to the rigid rules laid down in the preceding chapter; having obtained his tutor's consent, and received from him a present of the Vedas, the young Brahmin is permitted to espouse a wife of his own tribe, but not within the sixth degree of consanguinity. Some very judicious, and other very curious, rules are laid down for his conduct in the choice of a wife; in particular, he is recommended not to marry any woman with red hair, deformed in her limbs, or immoderately talkative, nor into any family that has produced no male children, or that is subject to any hereditary complaint, as phthisis, epilepsy, and elephantiasis. Let him, say the wise Institutes, choose for his wife a girl whose form has no defect, who has an agreeable name, who walks gracefully, like