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course of the two nations in the northern regions of Hindostan that intercourse proved from various circumstances, but particularly from the impressive one of an antient conquest of Hindostan by Oguz Cawn, and recorded by Abulgazi, the Tartar historian. The subject considered in a more general point of view the probable origin of all human sacrifices, that general belief which prevailed throughout the antient world in the agency of DEMONS, and in the frantic terrors inspired by SUPERSTITION -- a description, from the Asiatic Researches and Mr Holwell, of CALLEE, the sable goddess of India, with an accompanying engraving of that formidable divinity, on whose baleful altars human victims were accustomed to be offered.-Human sacrifices seldom practised by the antients, but in cases of the greatest national emer gency; as WAR, FAMINE, PESTILENCE, when the noblest possible victims were selected. - The various modes of devoting to death the miserable victim specified-particularly the more horrid rites used by the SCYTHIANS, as described by Herodotus-decapitation, inhumation, or burning, the general mode adopted in India-an instance of the former from the HEETOPADES-human sacrifices common at the funerals of the antient sovereigns of Scythia, or Tartary, and at those of the Indian rajahs—instances of the latter from Tex, eira, Anciennes Rélations, Tavernier, and Orme's Historical Fragments. Profound veneration both of the Indians and Scythians for the MANES of their

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ANCESTORS-exemplified from a passage in Herodotus, from another in the SACONTALA, and from Mr Wilkins's account of the ceremony of the STRADHA in the HEETOPADES.

In the second section, relative to the Persians, the very remarkable similitude subsisting in the leading principia of the religion of ZOROASTER and BRAHMA, the great legislators of the PERSIAN and Indian empires, is pointed out --particularly in their mutual belief in one SUPREME PRESIDING DEITY, governing the universe by inferior agents, and adored in Persia under the name of ORO MASDES, and in India under that of BRAHMEin the parallel powers and similar office of the mediatorial MITHRA and the preserver VEESHNU -in those of the malignant AHRIMAN and the destroying SEEVA-in their account of the conflicts of the good and evil GENII, or DEWTAHS, contending for superiority in the creation their kindred adoration of the SOLAR ORB and of FIRE. A general view of the mythology of the Hindoos, and an enumeration of the deities most conspicuous in that mythology, The SUN and ELEMENTARY FIRE considered in both countries as the most perfect emblems of Deity. Worship paid to the Sun, or SURYA, under the plea of adoring God in that orb, whose throne the Persians supposed to be seated in it, asserted to have been, in antient times, nearly as general in India as in Persia proved to have been so from a very great variety of passages inserted in order, and extracted

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from the VEDAS, the AYEEN AKBERY, and the three principal translations yet made from antient Sanscreet writings, viz. the GEETA, the HELTOPADES, and the SAÇONTALA-the sect of the sun worshippers at this day called SAURA-the account given, by Philostratus, of a most superb temple to the Sun--another from the Ayeen Akbery.— The Indian mysterious triliteral word AUM the same with the Egyptian oм, and both used to signify the solar fire.fire-temples mentioned in the same book to have flourished at Benares, Rai-Jird, and other places, in the time of the second Boodh, about a thousand years before Christ. — The Moon, or CHANDRA, a male deity in Hindostan - that very singular circumstance adduced in proof that India has not borrowed her mythology from Egypt, where the moon was a female divinity, adored under the name of Isis, and whence the Greeks had their horned goddess Io. - The Indian Chandra drawn by antelopes -a RABBIT his symbol, as the CAT was of the Moon in Egypt, for a curious philosophical reason adduced from Plutarch.--FOUNTAINS sacred to the Moon in India - no less than 360 fountains consecrated to that orb at Kehrow, in Cashmeer-a circumstance pointed out as exceedingly remarkable, being the number of the days of the antient year. --The two supreme rajah families of Hindostan denominated SURYA-BANS and CHANDRA-BANS, or children of the sun and moon. The elements personified and venerated under various names-AGNEE

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VAN-CREESHNA, the Indian Apollo-CARTICEYA, the Indian Mars LACHSMEE, the Indian Ceres SERASWATI, the Indian Minerva-CAMA, the Indian god of love-BHAVANI, the Indian Venus, &c. &c.-From adoring God in the sun, the Orientals proceeded by degrees to worship the planetary train that worship promoted by their general cultivation of the science of astronomy. An enlarged view taken of the antient SABIAN SUPERSTITION-its rapid progress over all the stigmatised in Job and the prophetic writings. The rise and progress of astronomy in Asia-pursued with uncommon ardour in Indiaremains of stupendous astronomical instruments at the observatory of Benares and other places. The Indians believed the stars to be exactly what the Phoenicians imagined their zOPHESAMIN to be, ANIMATED INTELLIGENCES of the former, evidence adduced from the Ayeen Akbery; of the latter, proof brought from Bishop Cumberland's Sanchoniatho. -Their greatest princes, legislators, and heroes, consequently exalted to the skies representative images formed of them-those images by degrees adored instead of their originals. Various animals, as their respective symbols, assigned to them by superstition those animals venerated in their turn. A retrospective survey of the deities and symbols of Egypt, and a short parallel, preparatory to one more extended, of those deities, and their symbols, with the Indian divinities and symbols. The bull of OSIRIS

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the bull of SEEVA. SERPENTS sacred in both countries the EAGLE of JOVE the GARUDA, or eagle of VEESHNU. That survey extended to the temples of either country-the similitude astonishing, but reserved for full examination after the caverns of Salsette and Elephanta shall have been described. The stupendous mysteries of superstition practised in them attempted to be investigated, and the profound arcana taught in them unfolded. The Author enters upon that task, hitherto unaccomplished, and even unattempted, by the greatest Indian scholars and the most celebrated Asiatic travellers, with diffidence, blended with firmness, resulting from long and elaborate investigation into such books of antiquity as treat of CAVERNS, and such modern publications as best describe the GROTTOES of Egypt, the ROCKY SUBTERRANEOUS shrines of MITHRA, and the particular caverns in question. The authors, in this part, more immediately consulted, are Porphyry, in his very curious and beautiful treatise de ANTRO NYMPHARUM; Mr Norden's Account, and elegant engravings, of the EGYPTIAN ANTIQUITIES; and Montfaucon and Dr Hyde on the MITHRATIC CAVES, RITES, and SYMBOLS. -Convinced that the mystery, considered by M. Anquetil Du Perron and M. Niebuhr as inscrutable, was only to be solved, by a still closer exami nation of the principles of the ZEND and the VÊDAS, by means of Dr Hyde and Sir William Jones, he attempts to investigate still deeper those sacred depositories

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