of this fairy land by Dr. F. Buchanan, from whose excellent essay on the Burmans I have gleaned my knowledge of it, lest in this age of emigration I should frustrate some of the laudable and considerate plans of our Colonial Secretary. However, as it is proper that so interesting a country should be more extensively known, I must venture to continue my relation, with as much brevity and as much adherence to veracity as the subject will admit of. Women in this delightful island bring forth their children in the streets without pain, and there leave them. In this there is nothing whatever unnatural, as the children thus left do not die; for the passengers put the extremities of their fingers into the mouths of the infants, who from thence suck a most exquisite nectareous liquor, by which they are refreshed and nourished for seven days, in which time they become full grown. No one knows his own relations, not only for the above-mentioned reason, but also because all the inhabitants of the northern island are of the same form and golden colour. Whenever, therefore, a man and woman, struck with mutual love, wish to contract marriage, they retire under the shade of a most agreeable kind of tree. If they be not nearly related, this tree bends down its branches and leaves, and forms for them a delightful bower; but if they be related, they immediately discover their consanguinity by the then unbending branches. These islanders are thirteen cubits high, and are very handsome, especially the women, who excel in softness, suppleness, and elegance of limbs.

Skies of heavenly serenity and a delightful temperature reign for ever in this enviable country. Its trees exude gums of aromatic fragrance; and streams of sandal-wood, in which the natives bathe, issue from every part of the island.

All this is blissful and wonderful enough for common understandings; but if any of my readers should be pleased to soar into the regions of romance, wherein I beg to assure them I have not, comparatively speaking, yet entered, I must refer them to the eighth article of the sixth volume of the Asiatic Researches, where they will find the Nats, or inhabitants of the heavens above the country in question, blessed in an inconceivably multifold degree with the luxuries of very surpassing trees, and numerous other

et ceteras, which turn the legends of the Arabian Nights and Fairy Tales into mere bagatelles. But as that volume may not be at hand, the following description of the elephant of the Nat sovereign may for the moment suffice: "This elephant has thirty-three heads, corresponding to the thirty-three Nat princes. Every head has seven teeth, which are fifty juzana in length. In every tooth are seven lakes; in every lake, seven flowering trees; on every tree, seven flowers; in every flower, seven leaves; in every leaf, seven thrones; in every throne, seven chambers; in every chamber, seven beds; and in every bed, seven Nat dancing girls.

"The stature of these Nat is three gaut; the duration of their lives thirtysix millions of years; and they do not require the light of the sun and moon, since that from their own bodies is quite sufficient, as they shine like so many suns and stars.'

These planets are, however, the palaces of Nats. He of the solar orb has his of gold and crystal, while that of the gentleman who inhabits the moon is of silver and carbuncle.

But, after all, the Nat and the Padeza Bayn trees are nothing to Gautama and the tree (Gnaing Bayn) under which he received his divine nature. Under this tree resides the king of the elephants, in all the luxury of an elephant Sardanapalus.

The Buddhas, like the Brahmans, have had their Assuras or Nat demons, and furious wars have taken place between them; which have, of course, terminated in favour of the most worshipful party. Both sides, on those occasions, performed prodigies of valour, though no one was killed on either. These contests were at length decided by a trial of skill instead of prowess, the Nat prince having challenged Gautama to decide their supremacy by the power which either had to conceal himself from the other. The challenge having been accepted, the Assura changed himself, while Gautama closed his eyes, into a grain of sand, and descended to the centre of the earth. This the god, by his omniscience, knew very well, and accordingly clapped his left hand over the hole, and with the right tossed about the earth like a tee-totum, till his opponent became, if the term may be used, completely sea-sick. On his coming up from his hiding place,

Gantama in an instant transformed himself into a minute atom, and placed himself over the eye, between the eyebrow and the eyelid of the assura, and called to him to seek him. The other hearing the voice so near, looked and groped, and groped and looked in vain; till having wandered through the four great and two thousand small islands of the world, the ocean, and Gautama and the Nat only know where besides, he found himself harrassed, vexed, fatigued, and frustrated, and gave up the contest, acknowledging the superior power of Gautama, and calling upon him to shew himself. This the god did by making a ladder of gold and gems, and lowering it before the face of the astonished Assura. He then descended, not as an atom, but in all the glory and attributes of his divine character.

The heavens of the Buddhas are twenty-six, placed one above another. At the end of the maha calpi, when the world will be at an end, six of the lower of these celestial abodes will be destroyed by fire, four by storms, and six by water. The four superior heavens will escape destruction; but what will become of the six intermediate ones does not so clearly appear.

The great hells are thirty-four; but besides these there are a hundred and twenty smaller hells. Those which are hot lie immediately under the earth; which may possibly account for the many volcanos, whirlpools, and sundry explosive and other turbulent things that it contains.

The punishments for sinners in these hells are as correspondingly degrading, as the condition of the good is in the heavens transcendently happy with this difference, that in their amended state they contrive to forget (a thing very uncommon in this lower world of ours) what they ascended from: whereas, in their debased situation, their reminiscences are more perfect; as we are told of a priestly dignitary, who having, for practices it may be presumed partaking of the nature of the insect, been transformed into a louse, became so absolutely miserable at the idea of his goods and chattels, especially his garment, in which he took great pride (unlike the pious and patriarchal pastors of the western world, who entertain no such proud or selfish feelings, or worldly considerations for rich garments or rich chattels of any kind) being divided among the surviving

priests, that his agitation was painfully obvious to his old associates, who, with the feeling common to their order towards sentient animals, applied to Gautama to know what to do. The deity desired them to wait seven days (the term of a louse's life), in which time the miserable insect (as will be seen hereafter), would be emancipated in some way from his then unhappy state. A louse's mental agony is, however, but as the bite of one to some of the infernal punishments of the Buddha's Tartarus. Assura Nat are their Minos and Rhadamanthus, and, as it may be imagined, are not very tender in awarding to their opponents their full share of any tortures which their misdeeds may have called for. One of these is, that a man as big as three mountains, and who is always in a hungry state, is tantalized by having a mouth no longer than the eye of the finest needle. The punishments attributed to the hells of the Buddhas assimilate so nearly to those of the Hindus, that a farther description of them may be referred to the account which will be found of them under the head of Yama, and the figures in plate 28.

The destruction of the world will, it is imagined, take place in the following manner. A great rain will, at a future time, fall in torrents; after which not a drop will descend from the heavens for a hundred thousand years. In this period plants, animals, and every living thing will perish, the sun and the moon will disappear, and, in their stead, two false suns will arise. The one will succeed the other, rising when it sets. There will then be no night. The heat will be intense, and small bodies of water will be dried up. A third sun will arise and dry up the largest rivers; a fourth and fifth will come and dry up the different seas; a sixth will rend asunder the 1,010,000 earths, from whose rents will be emitted smoke and flames. By the seventh sun the heavenly mountain Mienmo, and all its celestial inhabitants, will be consumed. The destroying fire, having then nothing more to feed it, will expire of its own accord.

The Buddhas allege that every thing exists from natural causes; that virtue brings its own reward, and vice its own punishment; and that the state of man is probationary. If he be virtuous, he will, after death, ascend to one of the lower heavens, but will be born again many times and as he

may each time continue virtuous, or according to the extent of his virtue, he will progressively ascend in the scale of celestial bliss, till he may finally reach the highest heaven, and obtain Nivani or absorption, not as the Hindus believe, into a supreme being, which would not be in accordance with the doctrines of the Buddhas, but a kind of cessation of animal suffering, and exemption from farther transmigration.

If he have been wicked, he will, in like manner, descend into the different hells, and will exist again in the forms of different animals, according to the nature and extent of his sins; but the duration of his punishment is not eternal, and is still supposed to depend upon himself. He may thus, according to his conduct in the various forms he may exist in, be again elevated to the probationary condition of man; and, although his crimes may have once degenerated him into a lion, or, as just noticed, into a louse, a monkey, a mammoth, or a maggot, he will still, on attaining the state of man, be in a condition to look forward, by the practice of virtue, to obtain at a future period the blissful reward of Nivani.

If, however, he continue to be wicked in this degraded and degenerate state, he will descend still lower and become a devil, than which nothing can be imagined more base or miserable. Some of these devils are such hungry and abject wretches, that the very secretions of the mouth and nostrils are described as being delectable food to them. It is to be presumed that these hungry devils are not of the race of the Seven Hundred in Ceylon, whom Buddha (wherein he displayed signs of supremacy) ordered Vishnu to destroy; which that deity did, except one, by calling to his aid Vige Kumareia, the lion hero, and founder, in union with a female devil, of the early race of Singhalese monarchs. The story is curious, but would occupy too much space for this work. It will be found at length in M. Joinville's Treatise on the Religion and Manners of the People of Ceylon, in the seventh volume of the Asiatic Researches.

Gaudama has also enjoined, as a necessary qualification to obtain Nivani, the performance of dana, or the bestowing of alms; and of bavana, which (according to Dr. F. Buchanan) consists in pronouncing three words: