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up, incontinence and its attendant vices increase with them. Indeed, the greater part of their institutions, civil and religious, appear to be contrived for the purpose of nourishing and stimulating that passion. The stories of the disso Tute life of their gods; the solemn festivals so often celebrated, from which decency and modesty are wholly excluded; the abominable allusions which many of their daily practices always recal; their public and private monuments, on which nothing is represented but the most wanton obscenities; their religious rites, in which prostitutes act the principal parts;-all these causes, and others that might be named, necessarily introduce among the Hindoos the utmost dissoluteness of manners." p. 191.

"The idolatry of India is of a grosser kind than that of Greece or Rome, at least in many circumstances. It is the water itself which they worship; it is the fire, men, or animals; it is the plant, or other inanimate object. In short, they are led to the adoration of things from the consideration of their being useful or deleterious to them. A woman adores the basket which serves to bring or to hold her necessaries, and offers sacrifices to it, as well as to the rice mill, and other implements that assist her in household labours. A carpenter does the like homage to his hatchet, his adze, and other tools, and likewise offers sacrifices to them. A Brahman does so to the style with which he is going to write; a soldier to the arms which he is to use in the field; a mason to his trowel, and a labourer to his plough." p. 373.

"The grossness of the idolatry which universally prevails in India is such, that many find it difficult to comprehend how an intelligent people should be attached to so absurd a worship;"--but "the very extravagance of the Hindoo idos latry, the whole ritual of which is nothing less than the subversion of common sense, serves to give it a

deeper root in the hearts of a people, sensual, enthusiastic, and fond of the marvellous." " They are still more irresistibly attached to the species of idolatry which they have embraced by their uniform pride, sensuality, and licentious

ness.

Whatever their religion sets before them tends to encourage their vices; and consequently all their senses, passions, and interests are leagued in its favour." p. 390.

"In the outer court of their temples, the niches have the front filled with figures, bearing allusion to their fables, or to the most monstrous obscenities." "The principal walls without are likewise covered with them; in some instances, all round." p. 398.

"Next to the sacrificers, the most important persons about the temples are the dancing girls, whose profession requires of them to extend their favours to all who solicit them. They are consecrated in a special manner to the worship of the gods of India. Every temple entertains a band of them to the number of eight, twelve, or more.” "As soon as their public business is over, they open their cells of infamy, and frequently convert the temple itself into a stew." p. 401.

"In the sects of Siva and Vishnu, they admit a kind of priestesses, or women specially consecrated to the service of their deities. They are different from the dancing wo meu of the temples; but they fol low the same infamous course of life with them. For after being con secrated, they become common to their sect, under the name of spouses to these divinities."

These women are held in honour in public by their own cast; although in reality they be nothing better than the prostitutes of the priests." p. 71.

Speaking of the nocturnal sacri fices used by the Hindoos, the Abbè observes, that they are "more and more wicked in proportion as those who assist at them are deeply initiated in the attendant mysteries of darkness." p. 171. — But: we

dare not pollute our pages with all the detail of the abominations which, according to the Abbè, are exhibited at these festivals. The following may serve as a speci

-men:

"All casts are invited." "They bring before the idol, Vishnu, all sorts of meat that can be procured, without excepting that of the cow. They likewise provide abundance of arrack, the brandy of the country, opium, &c." "He who ad ministers, tastes each species of meat and of liquor, after which he gives permission to the worshippers to consume the rest. Then may be seen men and women rushing forward, tearing and devouring. One seizes a morsel, and while he gnaws it another snatches it out of his hands; and thus it passes on from mouth to mouth till it disap. pears, while fresh morsels in succession are making the same disgusting round. The meat being greedily eaten up, the strong liquors and the opium are sent round. All drink out of the same cup, one draining what another leaves, in spite of their natural abhorrence of such a practice." "When arrived at a state of drunkenness, men and women being all indiscriminately mixed, there is no restraint on any kind of excess." "The women are there in common. All casts are confounded, and the Brahman is not above the Pariah." p. 171.

tenanced by the irregular lives of their gods, and by the rites which their worship prescribes." p. 421.

Of the prevalence of human sacrifices the Abbè furnishes incontestable evidence. When any extraordinary magical effect is intended, the magician cannot depend on a certain result "without offering the sacrifice of a young girl to the demons of mischief." And "when people in authority come to a magician for information, this barbarous sacrifice is generally a prelude to the ceremonies." "Indeed," he adds, "we may easiły convince ourselves that no nation can have less repugnance to human sacrifices than the Hindoos," though, of late, their intercourse with Europeans and Mussulmans, who express a horror of such crimes, has nearly effected their total abolition*. In the Kalika-purana, one of their most esteemed sacred books, written under the direction of Siva, "we find the most minute detail of the mode, the ceremonies, and the advantage of sacrificing human and other living victims." Their gods are all "delighted with human sacrifice, but, above all, Kali, a female divinity, and the most wicked of all. Such an offering gives her a gleam of pleasure that endures a thousand years; and the sacrifice of three men together would prolong her ecstasy for a thousand centuries. In this abominable book human sacrifices are held to be a right inherent in the princes, to whom they are the source of wealth, the cause of victory, and other tem poral blessings." p. 491.

Some of the abominable practices prevailing among the Hindoos the Abbè describes as being so enormously wicked, that every thing recorded in history sinks to nothing We feel that an apology is nein the comparison. "There are tem-cessary to our readers for the inples where the divinity requires to be honoured with the most unbounded licentiousness." p. 412. And he closes his outline of the religious ceremonies of the Hindoos with observing, that “a religion more shameful or indecent has never existed amongst u civilized people." p. 420." Licentiousness prevails almost universally without shame or remorse. Every excess is coun

troduction of certain parts of the above extracts. They will do us, we are persuaded, the justice to believe, that in transcribing them we have reluctantly yielded to a sense of what is due not only to the memory of a good man most grossly calumniated, but to the cause

This refers to the peninsula. In Bengal and Orissa we fear that human sacrifices are still frequent.

of religion itself. It would have been easy, indeed, to have multiplied extracts from the same work of a far more offensive and disgusting kind than any we have produced; but we were desirous to proceed no further than seemed necessary to vindicate the strong terms by which Dr. Buchanan was accustomed to characterise the religion of the Hindoos-IMPURITY and BLOOD. His vindication to this extent, we repeat it, seemed a debt due not merely to his memory, and to the distinguished place to which his services had raised him in the church of Christ, but to that sacred object which it was the grand aim of his life to promote-the diffusion of the blessings of genuine civilization, and of pure and undefiled religion, throughout our Indian empire. The public have a right to know something of the abominations which continue to be practised under the protecting shade of our authority. They have a right to know that such are the temples, and such the established rites of worship which a British government condescends to superintend and regulate, and from which it does not scruple to pollute itself by deriving a revenue. Under these circumstances, it is surely incumbent on those who are concerned for the honour, of their country, no less than for the best interests of humanity, not to sink the facts of such a case in indistinct generalities, nor to be too squeamish in developing the detestable practices which call for authoritative interference. We are advocates for extending the most unlimited toleration to the subjects of every part of the British empire, however abject their superstition, or however erroneous their faith. But the toleration-in some cases, we might say the direct encouragement-of crimes, and of crimes, too, the bare recital of which fills the mind with disgust and horror, is quite a different af

For the evidence of this opprobrious fact, we request the reader to turn to our volume for 1813, p. 646, et seq.

fair; and not only is this not required by any considerations of duty or expediency which ought to influence the national conduct, but it seems to us to be a direct violation of the most binding obligations of a government, and of the soundest maxims of political wisdom. We sincerely hope that information on this point may be called for in the ensuing session of Parliament.

A reflection which unavoidably forces itself on the mind, in reviewing the whole of the controversy respecting the character of the Hindoos, is this:-How very small is the value which we ought to attach, in great moral questions, to what is called "local knowledge," unless the individual who claims credit on this score, while free from the bias of interest, has also been accustomed to think justly and reason soundly on moral and political subjects, and has not only had sufficient opportunities of acquiring the knowledge to which he pretends, but has diligently, faithfully, and impar tially improved those opportunities! Now if this reflection be well founded in respect to the AngloIndians, as we have endeavoured to shew on a former occasion*, how much more powerfully will it apply to such a case as that of the existing West-Indian controversy. Our readers, indeed, cannot fail to recollect that the persons by whom, both in evidence and in argument, the character of the Slave Trade was defended, and its civilizing effects on Africa maintained,grounded their claim to the public confi. dence on their local knowledge; and, supported by this claim, they succeeded for a time in obstructing the march of humanity and jus tice. On the same pretext have the West Indians gained the ear of multitudes among us, who seem to think it unreasonable that the opinions of men who have themselves lived in the West Indies, and who have been personally and intimately conversant with the things of which

• Vol, for 1806, p. 116, &c.

they speak, should not be received as conclusive on questions of WestIndian policy. Those who are disposed to be thus credulous may, however, take a useful lesson from past experience, and learn to rely more on the truth of general principles, and less on conclusions drawn from partial observation on the spot, by men unaccustomed to generalize, and who both act and reason under the combined impulse of interest, prejudice, and passion.

But to return to Dr. BuchananAnother point on which the AngloIndians impugned the fidelity of his statements, was his account of the Syrian Christians of Malabar. Some of them were even bold enough to represent the whole narrative as a fable; and one gentleman in par ticular, who had passed thirty years of his life in Bengal, and for a time had filled a seat in the supreme council of India, (whose testimony must, therefore, have been regarded as almost oracular by such as clamour for the infallibility of local knowledge,) declared at the bar of the House of Commons, that he had not been aware, during his residence in India, that there existed a single native Christian in that country. Since that time, indeed, the accuracy of Dr. Buchanan's narrative has ceased to be any longer a matter of dispute; and the most sceptical objector has now only to turn to the recent transactions of the Church Missionary Society and their correspondence with Colonel Munro, the British Resident in Travancore, for a satisfactory verification of every material fact which it records.

This topic reminds us of another circumstance which has been made use of to lower the public estimate of Dr. Buchanan's usefulness, and to detract from his claims to the gratitude of the Syrian Church. It is well known, that at the time of his death he was engaged in editing the Syrian version of the New Testament, for the use of that CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 189.

interesting community. He had completed the Four Gospels, and the greatest part of the Acts, before he was called to a still nobler employment of his powers in another world. After his decease, it was suggested, that the plan on which he had proceeded would render the work unacceptable to the Syrian Christians. The ground of this suggestion was, that the vowel points, which, both in the manuscript copies of the New Testament that they had been accustomed to use, and in former impressions, had been placed indifferently, some below and some above the line, in Dr. Buchanan's edition were all placed above it. His object in this alteration had been to save room, and thus to lessen the size of the work and the expense of printing it; and it was allowed by all Syrian scholars, that it produced no effect whatever on the sense, but that all who could read the Syrian language could read it with the same facility on either plan. It was further admitted, that there were no fixed rules in the Syrian language for the position of the vowel points. These reasons, however, did not suffice to vindicate the plan a dopted by Dr. Buchanan, which, it was still affirmed, from its exhibiting a novel appearance to the eye, would offend the prejudices of the Syrian Christians. The sheets printed by him were therefore laid aside, and the work was begun, de novo, in exact conformity to some former edition. But while this conrse was pursuing, it was thought right that the question of the acceptableness of the work, (the hinge on which the determination had turned), should not rest on abstract reasoning alone, but should also be tried by the test of experiment. A few copies, therefore, of the work, as far as it had proceeded, were transmitted to India and conveyed to the Syrian Christians. The result of the experiment, we are happy to say, has just reached England, and has been communicated to the public in the 4 G

sheet of "Monthly Extracts from the Correspondence of the British and Foreign Bible Society," for the month of August: it is as follows:

"The copies of the Syriac Go. spels, forwarded to the Syrian Christians in Travancore, have proved a most acceptable gift to them. Three copies were presented to the Bishop, Mar Dyonisius, aud the clergy with him at Kotyam; and three were given to the British Resident, Colonel Munro, who has established at Kotyam a college for the education of the Catanars, The type and character of these Gospels are considered by them to be executed in the BEST manner; and the Bishop and Catanars (or clergy) expressed the most earnest desire to receive the whole of the

Old and New Testament printed in the same manner. They have very few copies of the Scriptures among them."

We trust that there will now re. main no hesitation in gladdening this ancient church by the completion, and diffusion amongst them, of the work which they seem so highly to estimate.

Since the publication of these volumes, our attention has been parti cularly called by a respected friend and correspondent, to a point in Dr. Buchanan's conduct at college to which it may be proper for us to advert; namely, his zealous attention to the religious improvement of the junior fellow-students with whom he associated. It is remark. ed by his biographer, speaking of the earlier period of his residence at Cambridge, that

"From the time of his coming to college, according to the information of a contemporary friend, Mr. Buchanan was exceedingly regular and studious, keeping but little company, for the sake, he supposes, of economy both as to expense and time. His situation, too, was at first peculiarly unpleasant from finding scarcely a single companion whose sentiments and habits were congenial with his own. His indisposition to general visits even rendered

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"I would gladly know whether it is the will of God that I should associate with my fellow-students more than I do; whether I ought to separate myself, or mingle with them, endeavour to obtain some weight among them, and correct their manners, and seek opportunities of speaking for God." "If I were 'wise as a serpent,' I might possibly entwine some of them in the net

of the Gospel. Of late this subject has been much on my mind, and I have been earnest in prayer that I may be made useful to some of them. At my rooms they have always acted with the strictest decorum; scarcely an improper word has been spoken, and I know not but I might have been a restraint upon them at their own. My principal reason for resisting their frequent invitations is a fear lest I should lose time in

idle conversation, or be unawares led into undue compliances." Vol. 1. pp.75, 76.

In conformity probably with this new apprehension of his duty, we find him, in the succeeding year, meeting and conversing frequently with a fellow-student, who gives this account of one of their interviews:

"On that occasion Dr. Buchanan

greatly surprized me by strongly condemning the vanity of the pursuits of ambition, in which I was then hotly engaged. I defended my side, in which self was so deeply concerned, with much warmth and positiveness; but when I was left alone, I could not altogether shake off the impression which his serious, solemn, and scriptural mode of argumentation had left upon my mind." Vol. I. p. 106.

Our correspondent, mentioned above, has thrown some new and honourable light on this period of

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