the affections of their husbands. These, therefore, are most appropriately propitiated by investing them, symbolically, with all the rites of married women and hence the nature of the offering in this instance.

In the case of complaints supposed to proceed from possession by a spirit called Geera, or the soul of an unhappy Bramhin, the offering cast away consists of an old shoe, a stick with a few iron rings attached, and a small crooked knife; and, capricious as these seem, they have a strict reference to the requisites of a Brahmin mendicant, or religious ascetic, namely, the pilgrim's shoon and staff, with rings attached to make a jingling noise, and frighten away wild beasts in the jun. gle where he takes up his solitary abode

forms, exactly corresponding with the above description, such as Om ! Hram! Hrim! Klim! Gloum! Hoom! Gum! Hroum! Phut! Swaha! and hundreds of others. Yet these are neither used capriciously, nor are they, as they may at first appear, an unconnected and meaningless jargon. They are constructed and used according to a system possessing almost scientific regularity, and have not only their several spiritual senses and powers, but, below all these, a profounder meaning common to them all, based upon the belief (a belief remarkable to find in India), that WORD was the first thing which broke primeval silence, spoke the being of a God, and created all things; its own utterance, or going forth from the everlasting and the infinite into time and space, necessitating, in the very act, the creation of AKASHU

things, without which sound and substance are alike impossible.

cance.

It is singular that customs apparently capricious, and devoid of meaning, traditionally prevalent among the magical and superstitious practices of other nations, can thus be traced back to Hindooism, and there alone are found devised on system and replete with signification. The same holds true of the gibberish which has been employed in sorcery in all countries and in all ages down to the nursery Fee-Fa-Fum! In a scene of magical incantation to Hecate, described in the Travels of Anacharsis, vol. iii. page 307, is the following passage on this subject:

"The incantations which I have been describing were accompanied with certain mysterious forms, pronounced at intervals by Mycale; but these are not deserving of repetition, since they consisted only of barbarous or disfigured words, without either connexion or meaning."

Now it is remarkable that not only the whole Muntru-Shaster, or science of sacred incantations of the Hindoos, but many of their most ordinary religious rites, abound in the use of mystic and apparently meaningless verbal

With this same doctrine of a primordial WORD, originating all things, comprehending all things,-which is Alpha and Omega, the first and the last is connected the profound mystery and veneration attached to the syllable Oм, which is the hieroglyphic or divine utterance of that Word. In the account of the creation contained in the Moolu-Stumbhu this is plainly stated:

"This wind, water, ether, earth, sun and moon were

not.

The heavens, the infernal regions, the congregated clouds,

The stars had no place.

All was void in the formless.

The seas, the mountains were not; even Brumha, Vishnoo and Roodru were not.

In the thus formless void was the one utterance 'OM.'

In THAT I beheld the three form-partaking worlds."

In the Song of the Illuminated, a mystic lyric by Ununt Rishee, is the following passage referring to this opinion, or rather conviction:

"Hark! in WORD a four-fold voice
Through the four Verdus thunders
One MIGHTY UTTERANCE of truth;
'TIS I THAT AM-THIS ALL IS I."

The term SHUBDU-BRUMHU, the WORD-GOD, Occurs in Dnyaneshwur and many other mystic authors. Grammarians use the terms NADU-BRUMHU, the SOUND-GOD.

The MUHAWAKYU, i. e. GREAT UTTERANCE, OF GREAT WORD, referred to in the above quotation, is defined in

another piece of Ununt Rishee's, in Sanscrit, as UнUм-USмI, i. e., I AM, and in other writers as UuUM-BRUMнASMI, I AM BRUMHU, which in the above Mahratta lyric is paraphrased "This all is I," or "I am all that is." This appears to confound God with the universe, while the Hebrew I AM THAT I AM represents him as distinct from his work. In the Vivek Sindhoo and Deep Rutnakur [the 3rd chapters in both works], the first cause of duality and creation is represented to be Egoity in Brumhu, which Egoity was manifested by the Great Word or utterance "I AM BRUMHU." This corresponds very exactly with the definition which Fleury gives in his historical catechism of that Divine Word, which was in the beginning with God, and was God. He says the Word is the self-consciousness in God. But the Hindoo works last named, belonging to the Vedantic or idealistic class, representing the universe itself to be only Maya or Illusion, call this first active cause Muha Maya or the Great Illusion, thus as it were denying its real eternal distinct being, and pronouncing it only as a temporary illusive mode or antiphasis-a mirage, in fact, in God Brumhu-Vivurtu. Yet it should not be forgotten that the word Maya signifies "love" as well as "illusion," and that we read in reference to the Divine Word, that his GOINGS FORTH were from of old, from ever. lasting and that the time appears indicated when, having subdued all enemies and redeemed all the sons of God, and delivered all nature from its present groaning and gravailing, he shall again be subject to the Father, and God shall once more be ALL in

ALL.

:

It is satisfactory to find the central truth of Christian theology coinciding with the highest results to which the abstractions and contemplations of the loftiest minds have been able to arrive in India as well as in Greece. It is no less instructive to mark the decadence into fruitless speculations, into lifeless mysticism-into a vain all-permitting and therefore all-destroying pantheism or into the bottomless abyss so nearly bordering on atheism, in which the Divine nature is contemplated as SHOONYU, or an infinite Nothing, which resulted, both in Greece and India, from a want of that other cardinal truth, outflowing from

the first, but to which the human intellect alone could never reach-the mystery of the Word made flesh, and dwelling amongst us a living reality. Of this Greece never dreamt in its full significance; for her sages, before they attained to this lofty speculation of truth, had lost all belief in those childish, and capricious, and wanton gods, whom the poets had painted as born and appearing on earth, and who were little else than deified men and women, or the far-off echoes of Egyptian, Phrygian, or Indian speculation or worship. And the only one of the Avatars, or divine manifestations, in the Hindoo system, in which the idea of a full revelation of the whole Deity in the human form is even pretended, namely, that of Krishnu, fails of realizing it to the heart or understanding, from moral as well as historical incompatibility.

The stories of the Fish, the Tortoise, and Boar, are clearly cosmal allegories, which either all refer to the Deluge, or denote the order of creation advancing from the molusca to the amphibia, and the viviparous quadrupeds; and the Man-Lion and the Dwarf, if they do not symbolize two further stages in the same process-the links, perhaps, between the quadruped and the human race, and man himself in the first dwarfish stage of civilization-if they do not belong to this allegorical class, are but momentary manifestations of the Divinity, descending for a single act of retributive justice. In Purshooram, Ram, and Krishnu we have deified heroes, representatives perhaps like Charle magne and Napoleon-of three successive periods of human progress, of great social or political movements, or of the predominance of the worship paid respectively to each.

The Bouddhyu Avatar symbolizes the dominancy for a time of the Buddhist system in India; or, as others ingeniously interpret it, it signifies the dumb or silent Avatar, i. e. the manifestation of the Deity under the form of dumb idols, as now worshipped.

In Krishnu alone is supposed to inhere the fulness of Deity; but this characteristic is manifestly of a late origin, subsequent, as Sir Wm. Jones conjectures, and as many reasons concur to suggest, to the Christian era; and what is more important, the whole character of his human actions, as exhibited in the Muhabharut itself, is

utterly incompatible with this divine idea, and wholly at variance with the sublime doctrines which he himself is made to teach in the Bhugwut Geeta. The latter is but an episode in the main poem, and, like many other of the philosophical episodes, was unques. tionably written long after the heroic parts of the epochs, which give Krishnu's true character as a human adventurer, lover, and warrior, characters which could never realise to the soul of man the Divine Word made flesh, and, as such, influence his life.

On this belief in the primordial existenee and omnipotence of WORD is founded the whole system of MUNTRUS, or mystic words of power, which are not limited to their magic art alone, but interlace the whole of their religious rites, and constitute Hindooism, in all its internal essentials, a magical religion, the effect of these words not depending on any corresponding disposition in the worshipper or priest, nor on the foregone promises of Deity to which they make an appeal, nor on the expressed sanction of civil society, of which they may be regarded as the type and seal, but on a power inherent in the sounds themselves, and consequently opus operatum in the most transcendant sense.

This is particularly exemplified in the rites termed NYASU and PRANU-PRUTISHTHA NYASU literally means the act of depositing. This ceremony is performed every morning by all the higher and middle orders: it consists of touching successively with the thumb the several joints of the three fingers, and afterwards the head, arms, and breast, pronouncing at each touch certain words and certain mystic syllables by which Deity, or perhaps rather deific and mystic virtue, is deposited in those parts. It appears to us to correspond very closely, though it is far longer and more complicated, with the blessing and signing with the cross practised by the Christians in the third century, and still by Roman Catholics. We have in our own mind no doubt whatever, so close is the resemblance in the motion of the thumb and hand, and the design, that the ceremony, like so many others, was borrowed, or rather converted from the use of Paganism to that of Christianity. And here let us not be misunderstood as participating in an error very prevalent in the present day, namely, that of condemn

VOL. XXXVII.-NO. CCXVII.

ing a practice as Pagan, because its external parallel is to be found in use among Pagans. On such a principle every act of Egyptian worship or magical practice which Moses preserved, as to form, but consecrated, by a sig nification wholly new, to the worship of the one God, might be condemned as idolatrous and heathen. For Moses spoiled the Egyptians, not of their jewels of gold and jewels of silver only, but of the most precious productions of their orderly, meditative, and symbolising intellect. He took under Divine guidance some portion of their social institutes, of their ritual order, of their religious festivals and ceremonies, of their sacred symbols, rejecting many others; but into this outward body of forms, devoid of life, or instinct with the corrupt vitality of polytheism, he breathed a new and living spirit, and hallowed all to the worship of the one true and living God, and made this sublime worship not the privilege of a caste, but the duty and the glory of a whole people.

PRANU-PRUTISHTHA literally signifies "fixation or instalment of life the ceremony of deific consecration, by which life is brought into the image of an idol, and the clay or metal becomes changed into a god, and fitted to be adored. It consists of a great repetition of NYASUS, i. e., blessings, or deposits of virtue in the several parts, invocations to the Pranu or vital spirit, and Jeevu or soul of the Deity whose presence is desired, and an oftrepeated utterance of the mystic sounds Om! Shrim ! Hrim! Goom! Hoom! Pum! Jum! &c. referred to in the text; word or articulate sound being considered if not life itself, yet the first and chief manifestation of the vital breath with which life is identical: the changes are rung on almost all the possible articulate monosyllabic sounds, which have accordingly been arranged in series, and a cabalistic meaning connected with the various personages of the mythology affixed to each, disguising the single and philosophical origin of the system.

But with this belief in the inherent omnipotence of WORD is joined, in practice, the invariable adoption of certain VIDHEE, or ceremonial acts and forms, the chief end of which seems to be, at least in many cases, to affect the mind of the parties operated on; to invest established in

F

stitutions and rites of worship with greater reverence, prohibitions with greater terror, obligations with a deeper solemnity, sanctions with a fuller confidence, assurance with more implicit certainty-in a word, to beget and maintain FAITH. And if, for this end, the spoken words be strengthened by acted forms in all the religious ceremonies of their most learned, still more so in the medical thaumaturgy intended to affect the popular mind. This will account, perhaps, for most of the forms above described. But there are some still more curious ones, which we shall now add, that seem to require a different explanation. These, though belonging to the general system of thaumaturgic medicine practised by the Waren Bhukts, are occasionally resorted to by other parties.

In some cases metallic rings are drawn along the body and limbs, for the purpose of relieving pain.

A medical gentleman who attended the patients in the Bombay Native Dispensary in 1842, observed a woman with a sick child, whose sufferings she endeavoured to alleviate by drawing the points of her fingers up and down in front of its body. He could not imagine her object at the time, but happening to read soon after an account of the Baron Du Potet's Magnetic Séances, the identity of the process immediately struck him.

In particular kinds of colic or indigestion called RECH, and other pains supposed to arise from the falling of the evil eye, or the intrusion of the impure foot during the time of eating food, they place at the feet of the patient a shallow metal dish filled with water; upon this they reverse a small narrow-mouthed metal pot containing fire, which sucks up all the water from the dish. The operator then takes a broom, and placing its point within a few inches of the affected part, draws it down repeatedly in raking passes towards the dish, making the motion of sweeping, into which he at length succeeds (so it is asserted) in sweeping the pain.

A lady informs us she has seen the same process adopted at Nuggur with perfect success, in the case of a man who had been stung by a scorpion. The pain, at first intense, was in a few moments completely alleviated.

In all these cases there appear disinct traces of mesmerism. In others,

the operator performs a remarkable rite which is called muntru-dene, or "administering the spell." This consists in taking a knife, holding it opposite the part of the stomach where the pain is felt, and while he pronounces some mystic words (whence the name of the process), passing it backwards and forwards from and towards the stomach, as in stabbing, or moving it down in front of it, as in cutting. The external action of the knife, by the virtue of the mystic words, extends into the stomach, cuts the supposed knot in the intestines, and removes the pain! How curiously blended in this operation are the practice of mesmerism with the magical or rather symbolical theory of India! The process and the effect are exactly the same as those of Mesmer, and those who, like him, at first made use of metallic tractors. But the Hindoo adds an incantation to give the process a magical character, while his own explanation of the manner in which the process takes effect would show the latter to be an action purely symbolical, invented for the purpose of affecting the imagination, and producing that unstaggering faith, which, where it exists, a wiser than Solomon has told us, is able to move mountains.

In jaundice an equally singular process is adopted. The operator, after placing a metal cup containing some water at the feet of the patient, takes two needles, one in each hand, and, pointing them one at each eye, passes them slowly down before his face for about an hour or half an hour. He then throws the needles into the water in the metal cup, and leaves them there. In the morning the water, which has by this time become quite yellow, is shown to the patient, who is sometimes cured in a few days. Here again is a process seemingly mesmeric, frequently operating an undoubted cure; yet the yellow water must make us hesitate whether we should class this among mesmeric or among symbolical processes; it seems to combine both. The water, it is to be remarked, does not turn yellow at the time, but next morning,-something is doubtless put in to make it yellow,-seeing which, the patient believes the jaundice is departing, and is cured perhaps by

faith.

The practice of sweeping disease down from the head to the feet, whe

ther with a broom, with the hand, with metallic rings, or needles, or with a tray containing offerings to a daimon, combines the conditions of the mesmeric and the symbolico-magical.

The same may be said of the process called phoonkne-ka-muntru, or the blowing spell, which some among the Purdesees practise for the purpose of alleviating headache and producing sleep. It consists in repeating a muntru, and breathing or blowing softly on the forehead.

The following extract from Hallam's "Literature of Europe," vol. iv. p. 70, will not be foreign to the subject of this paper, and with it we will conclude:

"The mystical medicine of Paracelsus

continued to have many advocates in Germany. A new class of enthusiasts, sprung from the same sohool, and calling themselves Rosicrucians, pretended to cure diseases by faith and imagination. A true Rosicrucian, they held, had only to look on a patient to cure him. The analogy of magnetism, revived in the last and present age, was commonly employed. Of this school the most eminent was Van Helmont, who combined the Paracelsian superstitions with some original ideas of his own. His general idea of medicine was, that its business was to regulate the Archæus, an immaterial principle of life and health, to which, like Paracelsus, he attributed a mysterious being and efficacy. The seat of the Archæus is in the stomach, and it is to be affected either by a scheme of diet, or through the imagination. Sprengel praises Van Helmont for overthrowing many current errors, and for announcing principles since pursued."

The large intermixture of imposture in the oracular and daimoniac systems has been noticed. Since the foregoing was written, a trial has taken place in the Supreme Court of Bombay, which affords a singular example of the prevalence of these beliefs among the Hindoo population, and the use which is sometimes made of them to defraud the over credulous. The case is thus noticed in the Bombay Telegraph and Courier of 3d Oct. :—

"The proceedings in the Supreme Court during the present week have afforded the Bombay community a striking proof of the prevalence of that credulity in the native population which has been so well illustrated by the learned author of the papers on Waren published in the Dublin University Magazine, and by Mr. Kinloch Forbes, in his translation of the Bhut Nibandh. The belief in supernatural agencies which is shown in the case of the two prisoners, Namdeo Dhondeba, and Wittoo Mahdoo, who were tried on Tuesday last before Sir Erskine Perry, is not a matter for any very great degree of wonder. But the mode in which those two expert chevaliers d'industrie utilised their knowledge of the superstitions of their countrymen, is certainly worthy of especial note, as illustrative of the mixture of knavery with folly which always accompanies these juggling exhibitions. The victim in the present instance was himself a Bhut, and his having been taken in is all the more remarkable on that account."

The following report of the trial appears in the Bombay Gazette of 2nd

October-the trial itself took place on the 1st October :

"The following contains a narrative, as given by the principal party concerned, of one of the most remarkable deceptions that we ever heard practised even in this land of darkness and idolatrous superstition :

"HOW TO LAY AN EVIL SPIRIT.-Namdeo Dhondeeba, and Wittoo Mahadoo (Case No. 28), pleaded Not Guilty to an indictment charging them with the larceny of the property of one Crustnajee Purushram, a Brahman Priest.

"The prosecutor having been duly sworn deposed as follows:-I am a Brahmin, and know the prisoners at the bar. Namdeo came to me one day in the month of March last, and said he knew a Potter who had found a crock of gold Mohurs while digging in a paddy field on the flats near Byculla. He asked me to come to the Potter's house to perform some ceremony before the pot could be taken from the place where it was found, because it was guarded by an evil spirit in the shape of a Caffree. On asking him for the particulars as to how the pot had been discovered, Namdeo replied that the Potter (the prisoner Wittoo Mahadoo) had found it while digging up the earth with a crowbar, and that a hole had been made in the side of the pot through which the gold Mohurs were to be seen. I accompanied Namdeo to the Potter's hut, which was situated behind the Theatre, on the Grant Road. The Potter then informed me that the crock of gold' originally belonged to a Portuguese of the name of Doming, and that it would be necessary to perform some incantations and offer up a gold cross of the weight of twenty or twentyfive tolas, which should be laid in the hole in