Mahommedan superstition, hurled with its wasteful hand over the fertile provinces of Hindostan, and through her august pagodas; pagodas overflowing for ages with the accumulated wealth of the whole western world.

I have already shewn, that it was to the shores of India that the great current of the treasures in gold and silver, produced by the mines of Spain, flowed, to be there swallowed up in a vortex that never regurgitated the shining spoil. Imagination is scarcely able to conceive the magnitude of the amount, in bullion and coined money, amassed during so many centuries in that secluded region of Asia; and the historians of Mahmud, of Gazna, who principally enjoyed the plunder of it, are at a loss for words to describe the astonishment and exultation of that prince, whose mind equally felt the goad of avarice and ambition, at the sight of it. They endeavour to impress us with some faint idea of it, by asserting, in their hyperbolical way, that he there saw a tree of pure gold, of an enormous size, growing naturally out of the soil;* which though doubtless to be understood allegorically, may approach nearer the truth than some other of their romantic strains, since, to imitate vines and other trees in gold was an ancient and very * See Orme's Hindostan, vol. i. p. 9.

favourite custom of the Indian metallurgists; and I have already, in former parts of this work, given two very apposite instances of it. The first is from Curtius, who, describing the palace of the luxurious monarch Musicanus, whose domain was situated towards the mouth of the Indus, that anciently rolled down gold from its mountainous source, particularly mentions the golden vines that twined around each of the columns that sustained the portico of his palace, in whose spreading branches were seen interspersed birds of silver, and others of various coloured enamel, to resemble nature. The second was the splendid gallery, seen by Tavernier, in the palace of Agra, which was partly covered with a kind of lattice work of gold, over which the tendrils of a golden vine diffused themselves, bearing fruit, of emerald, rubies, and other precious stones, resembling grapes in their different advances towards maturity; but this magnificent project he was obliged to drop, as, according to that traveller, it would have taken up more riches than all the world could furnish. The same device I have had repeated occasion to mention as much in esteem at the Persian court.

In evidence of their superabundant wealth in bullion may be enumerated the expiatory oblations for certain offences, ordained by the

Hindoo code, to be made in that metal by the ancient rajahs, and which, in fact, were frequently made to atone for, or to avert, evil; as, for instance, the weight of the person presenting the offering, in gold or silver; TREES AND VINES OF GOLD; golden elephants; golden horses and cows; and even chariots, drawn by horses and elephants, entirely of gold.*

The principal use, to which the Indians seem to have applied the immense quantity of bullion, from age to age imported into their empire, was, to melt it down into statues of their deities; if, indeed, by that title we may denominate the personified attributes of the Almighty and the elements of nature. Their pagodas were anciently crowded with these golden and silver statues; they thought any inferior metal must degrade the Divinity, and the sacred emanations that issued from the Source of all Being. Every house, too, was crowded with the statues of their ancestors, cast in gold and silver; those ancestors that were exalted to the stars for their piety or valour. This custom of erecting golden statues, in their houses and temples, to brave and virtuous men, seems to have remained long after the time of Alexander; for, we are told, by the same Apollonius, that he saw in India two

Ayeen Akbery, vol. iii. p. 229.

golden statues of that hero, and two of brass, representing Porus, the conquered Porus, and therefore of inferior metal.* The very altar of the temple was of massy gold; the incense flamed in censers of gold; and golden chalices and vases bore the honey, the oil, the wine, and the fruits, offered at their blameless sacrifice. I have already mentioned the temple of the Sun, or rather of Auruna, the day-star, described by Philostratus, whose lofty walls of porphyry were internally covered with broad plates of gold, sculptured in rays, that, diverging every way, dazzled the beholder, while the radiant image of the adored deity burned in gems of infinite variety and unequalled beauty on the spangled floor. The floor, also, of the great temple of Naugracut, in the northern mountains, even so late in time as the visit of Mandesloe, we have seen, was covered with plates of gold; and thus the Hindoo, in his purer devotion, trampled upon the god of half mankind. In the processions, also, made in honour of their idols, the utmost magnificence prevailed; they then brought forth all the wealth of the temple, and every order of people strove to outvie each other in displaying their riches, and adding to the pomp. The elephants marched first, richly decorated with * Philostrat. lib. ii. cap. II. E

VOL. VII.

gold and silver ornaments, studded with precious stones; chariots, overlaid with those metals, and loaded with them in ingots, advanced next; then followed the sacred steers, coupled together with yokes of gold, and a train of the noblest and most beautiful beasts of the forest, by nature fierce and sanguinary, but rendered mild and tractable by the skill of man; an immense multitude of priests carrying vessels, plates, dishes, and other utensils, all of gold, adorned with diamonds, rubies, and sapphires, for the sumptuous feast of which the gods were to partake, brought up the rear.* During all this time the air was rent with the sound of various instruments, martial and festive; and the dancing girls displayed, in their sumptuous apparel, the wealth of whole provinces exhausted to decorate beauty devoted to religion.

臀

If the zeal of the Arabians to make proselytes, added to their insatiable avarice, had not burst upon India in such a torrent of widewasting destruction, so little did the Greeks and Romans know of the internal provinces of India, we should probably to this day have remained in ignorance of the riches with which their palaces and their temples overflowed. Their native monarchs, grey with

* Strabo, lib. xv. p. 710,