*

of the latter, was the doctrine of the Metempsychosis carried to such an extreme point of speculative investigation as in the sacred caverns of India; but that the precepts taught and the rites celebrated, in both countries, were in a striking degree similar, will be more clearly manifested by the succeeding enumeration of particular parallel circumstances that distinguished them. Immersed in the errors of polytheism as was the great body of the Egyptian nation, it has yet been incontestably proved, by the immortal Cudworth, that the hierophant, or arch-priest, in the secret rites of their religion, taught the doctrine of the unity of the Godhead; but this noble sentiment, though they had the magnanimity to conceive, they wanted the generosity to impart to the deluded populace; for, it was thought dangerous, both to the church and the state, to shake the foundations of the reigning superstition. But, to those speculative and philosophic minds, that possessed sufficient firmness to bear the communication of so lofty and important a truth, the whole scene of vulgar delusion was laid bare, and the mystic veil, that obscured the "Great First Cause" from the view of his creatures, was rent

See Cudworth's Intellectual System, chap. v. sect. 18.

asunder;

asunder; while the initiated were taught, that Jupiter, Vulcan, Mercury, and the rest of the deities, who were the object of popular devotion, were nothing more than departed human beings, deified by grateful posterity for the virtues they had practised during life. and the benefits they had conferred upon

mankind.

Mr Hastings, one of the most early and liberal patrons of Sanscreet literature in India, in a letter to Nathaniel Smith, Esq. one of its most zealous encouragers in England, has remarked how accurately many of the leading principles of the pure unadulterated doctrines of Brahma córrespond with those of the Christian system. In the Geeta, indeed, some passages, surprisingly consonant, occur, concerning the sublime nature and attributes of God as well as concerning the properties and functions of the soul. Thus, where the Deity, in the form of Creeshna, addresses Arjun: "I am the Creator of all things, and all things proceed from me." am the beginning, the middle, and the end, of all things; I am time; I am all-grasping death, and I am the resurrection; I am the

"I

See Mr Hasting's recommendatory letter to N. Smith, Esq. at that time chairman of the East-India Company, and prefixed to the GEETA.

mystic

And

mystic figure OM! I am generation and dissolution!" Arjun, in pious ecstasy, exclaims; "Reverence! reverence! be unto thee a thousand times repeated! Again and again reverence! O thou, who art all in all! infinite in thy power and thy glory! Thou art the Father of all things animate and inanimate! there is none like unto thee!" P. 95. again, where Creeshna describes the nature of the soul: The soul is not a thing of which a man may say it hath been, it is about to be, or is to be hereafter; for, it is a thing without birth, it is incorruptible, eternal, inexhaustible! the weapon divideth it not, the fire burneth it not, the water corrupteth it not, the wind drieth it not away, for, it is indivisible, inconsumable, unalterable!" P. 37. Sir William Jones has been at the pains of translating four stanzas of the BHAGAVAT, which he says, are scrupulously literal, and which I shall take the liberty of transcribing, since they afford not only a striking proof of the sublime notions which the Hindoos entertain concerning the Deity, but exhibit a curious specimen of the style in which their sacred books are written. The words, he observes, are believed by the Hindoos to have been pronounced to Brahma by the Supreme Being himself.

"Even I was even at the first, not any other thing; that which exists, unperceived, supreme; afterwards, I AM THAT WHICH IS, and he wнO MUST REMAIN am I.

66

Except the FIRST CAUSE, whatever may appear or may not appear in the mind, know that to be the mind's MAYA, (or delusion,) as light, as darkness.

"As the great elements are in various beings, entering yet not entering; (that is, pervading, not destroying;) thus am I in them, yet not in them.

"Even thus far may inquiry be made by him, who seeks to know the principle of mind, in union and separation, which must be EVERY WHERE ALWAYS.'

Wild and obscure, Sir William observes, as these antient verses must appear in a naked verbal translation, it will be thought, by many, that the poetry of Greece and Italy affords no conceptions more awfully magnificent.* The first stanza brings irresistably to our recollection that sublime verse of the Apocalypse; I am ALPHA and OMEGA, the Beginning and the Ending, saith the Lord; which is, and which was, and which is to come, the ALMIGHTY." I earnestly entreat the candid

*Asiatic Researches, vol. i. p. 246.

reader

reader to take notice, that, when, in various parts of this treatise, I have spoken of the pure and sublime theology of Brahma, I have constantly alluded to these and similar original passages in their most sacred books, and not to those wild schemes of theology, engrafted upon it by commenting Brahmins, nor the complex and degrading system of devotion at present prevailing in Hindostan. Astonished at the striking similarity that subsists between the religious principles of the Hindoos and. those of the Christian faith, the learned Hyde * boldly pronounced, that BRAHMA must have. been the patriarch ABRAHAM. Postellus, † however, had, long before, asserted the same thing, with this additional circumstance, that the tribe of Brahmins were the descendants of that patriarch by his wife Keturah, and were so called, quasi Abrahmanes. He might, by parity of reasoning, have derived the name o. the second great Indian, or Kettri, tribe from Kiturah, from which it is not very dissimilar but, in this case, unfortunately the same argument would hold good as that before-urged against the probability that, Zoroaster was of Judaic extraction: the total silence of the

*Hyde, Hist. Relig. vet. Pers. p. 31.

† Abraham Postellus in Commentario ad Jezirah.