fountains there are many in Hindostan: and, in particular, the Ayeen Akbery' reports,* that, in the village of Kehrow, in Cashmere, there are no less than 360; a number worthy of notice, because the exact number of the days of the antient year, before it was reformed by more correct observation. Το pierce the hitherto unexplored depths of the Hindoo system of astronomy, connected as that system is with their religion, is alike beyond the scope of my ability and the means of information in my possession. If en couraged by the public to proceed in these investigations into the antient history and sciences of that country, I shall, in a future portion of this infant work, attempt the arduous task of presenting my readers with the substance of what is already known on that head; and shall principally regulate my researches by the chapter on astronomy in the Ayeen Akbery, which is a professed extract from the famous Surya Sudhant of India, a book composed, Abul Fazil informs us, "some hundred thousand years ago;" by M. Bailly's celebrated "Traité de l'Astronomie Indienne et Orientale;" by Mr Playfair's accurate and ingenious dissertation, lately * Ayeen Akbery, vol. ii. p. 159. published published in the second volume of the Trans actions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh; and by the vast treasure of information to be collected from Mr Costard's profound Treatise upon the Astronomy of the Chaldæans, Arabians, and other Eastern nations. For the present, it will be sufficient for us to take a general retrospect of the gradual advances made by the human mind, from contemplating and admiring the célestial orbs, to deifying and adoring them. This will in its consequences lead us to a more particular consideration of that other principal source of all mythology mentioned before, viz. an immoderate, respect paid to the memory of powerful, wise, and virtuous, ancestors, especially the founders of kingdoms, legislators, and warriors. Devoted to pastoral life, and scattered over the extensive plains of Asia, the antient fathers of the human race could not avoid being deeply struck with the number, the beauty, and the splendour, of the heavenly bodies. Amidst the silence of surrounding night, in those delightful regions where the mildness of the climate allows the inhabitants to sleep in the open air, the wakeful eye of contemplation beheld and marked the slow progressive motion of those bodies through the clear blue sky sky above them. They observed their various mutations, they noted their distinguishing phænomena, the rising of some and the setting of others; and, from that ascension and decline, they learned to regulate their couduct as to the times and the seasons proper for the sowing of grain and the tillage of the ground. In process of time, they formed catalogues of the stars, they arranged them under various classes, and registered them in regular series. They portioned out the visible firmament itself into forty-eight different consteilations, and, in conformity to the hieroglyphic taste of the times, distinguished those constellations by the figures of various animals and other imaginary similitudes. From long and accurate observation of the consequences attending the particular situation of some of them in the heavens, they supposed these revolving orbs to have an influence upon the earth and upon the seasons; and the Greek and Roman poets, probably imitating the antient writers of Egypt and Syria, crowd their pages with allusions to those supposed influences. Non hæc Pleiades faciunt, nec aquosus Orion. * Propertius, ii. 16. 51. Nec Nec, sævus Arcturi cadentis A passage, which occurs in the antient and venerable book of Job, seems pointedly to allude to the reigning.superstition of the day, Canst thou restrain the sweet influences of Pleiades or loosen the bands of Orion ?* It was natural for those, who maintained the doctrine of their influence upon the elements of nature, to extend still farther their romantic conjectures, and to assert a similar predominant influence of the celestial orbs in all terrestrial concerns, but especially in the important and interesting events which befal great nations, in the prosperity and desolation of kingdoms, in the elevation to empire of triumphant virtue, and in the downfall of defeated tyranny. The planetary train, that constitute our own system, as performing their revolutions nearer the earth, were thought to have a more particular ascendency over the fate of its inhabitants; and the period of their transit over the sun's disk, and that of their occasionally coming into conjunction with any other constellation, was regarded as a period pregnant with the most awful events and productive of the most astonishing vicissitudes. Hor. ii. Carm. 1, 27. Impressed Impressed, therefore, with alternate wonder and terror at beholding these imagined effects of their influence upon this globe, from vigilantly observing, mankind proceeded by degrees to respect and venerate them, and intense ardour of contemplation in time mounted to all the fervour of devotion. Some of the antients supposed the STARS to be inhabited by beings, who not only guided their motions, but directed their benign or pernicious influences, and, consequently, to those presiding beings they addressed their adoration. Others imagined the STARS to be themselves animated intelligences, or ZOPHESEMIN,* and paid to the sphere the worship due to its Maker, But, almost every nation of the antient world united in considering them as the residence of departed spirits and the glorious receptacles of beatified virtue. According to the preceding extracts from the Ayeen Akbery, the Hindoo philosophers were deeply infected with each of these errors; and the accounts given by Sir Robert Barker, in the Philosophical Transactions, of the remains of astronomical and mathematical instruments, stupendously large, immoveable from the spot, וי See Bishop Cumberlan i's Sanchoniatho, p. 2. Phil. Transact. vol. lxvii. p. 598. and |