wildest parts of them repeated to the Hindoos, who ingrafted them on the old fable of Cesava, the Apollo of Greece." Now may not the converse of this opinion be quite as probable (for even Sir W. Jones cannot make more of it than his own expressed opinion), and may not the fact be that those wild stories of the Indian Crishna have been brought from that country, and some of them "ingrafted" on our Gospels? We had no Gospels till about sixty years after the birth of Jesus Christ, and it is notorious that those Gospels have been many times altered, in many ways, just as it suited the enthusiasm, or priestly interests of the time. "We may here ascertain an important point in the chronology of the Hindus; for the priests of Buddha left in Tibet and China the precise epoch of his appearance, real or imagined, in this empire; and their information, which has been preserved in writing, was compared by the Christian missionaries and scholars with our own era. Couplet, De Guignes, Giorgi, and Bailly, differ a little in their account of this epoch; but that of Couplet seems the most correct. On taking, however, the medium of the four, several dates, we may fix the time of Buddha, or the ninth great incarnation of Vishnu, in the year 1014 before the birth of Christ or 2799 years ago. "Now the Cáshmirians, who boast of his descent in their kingdom, assert that he appeared on earth about two centuries after Crishna, the Indian Apollo, who took so decided a part in the war of Máhabhárat; and if an etymologist were to suppose that the Athenians had embellished their poetical history of Pandion's expulsion, and the restoration of Egius, with the Asiatic tale of Pándus and Yudhishtir, neither of which words they could have articulated, I should not hastily deride his conjecture; certain it is that Pándumandel is called by the Greeks the country of Pandion. We have, therefore, determined another interesting epoch, by fixing the age of Crishna near the three thousandth year from the present time; and as the first three Avatárs, or descents of Vishnu, relate no less clearly to an Universal Deluge, in which eight persons only were saved, than the fourth and fifth do to the punishment of impiety and the humiliation of the proud, we may for the present assume, that the second, or silver age of the Hindus was subsequent to the dispersion from Babel; so that we have only a dark interval of about a thousand years, which were employed in the settlement of nations, the foundation of states or empires, and the cultivation of civil society. The great incarnate gods of this intermediate age are both named Ráma, but with different epithets; one of whom bears a wonderful resemblance to the Indian Bacchus, and his wars are the subject of his several heroic poems. He is represented as a descendant from Súrya, or the Sun; as the husband of Sitá, and the son of a princess named Cáuseyla. It is very remarkable that the Peruvians, whose Incas boasted of the same descent, styled their greatest festival Ramasitoa; whence we may suppose that South America was peopled by the same race who imported into the farthest parts of Asia the rites and fabulous history of Rama."-Sir W. Jones's Third Discourse. "The second great divinity, Crishna, passed a life, according to the Indians, of a most extraordinary and incomprehensible nature. He was the son of Dévací by Vasúdeva; but his birth was concealed through fear of the tyrant Causa, to whom it had been predicted, that a child born at that time in that family would destroy him: he was fostered, therefore in Mat'hurá by an honest herdsman surnamed Ananda, or Happy, and his amiable wife Yasódá, who, like another Pales, was constantly occupied in her pastures and her dairy. In their family were a multitude of young Gopas or cowherds, and beautiful Gópies, or milkmaids, who were his play-fellows during his infancy; and in his early youth he selected nine damsels as his favorites, with whom he passed his gay hours in dancing, sporting and playing on his flute. 'Both he and the three Rámas are described as youths of perfect beauty; but the princesses of Hindustan, as well as the damsels of Nanda's farm, were passionately in love with Crishna, who continues to this hour the darling God of the Indian women. The sect of Hindús who adore him with enthusiastic and almost exclusive devotion, have broached a doctrine which they maintain with eagerness, and which seems general in these provinces,that he was distinct from all the Avatárs, who had only an ansa or portion of his divinity, while Crishna was the person of Vishnu himself in a human form; hence they consider the third Ráma, his elder brother, as the eighth Avatár invested with an emanation of his divine radiance; and, in the principal Sanscrit dictionary, compiled about two thousand years ago, Crishna, Vásadéva, Góvinda, and other names of the Shepherd God, are intermixed with epithets of Nárayan or the Divine Spirit. All the Avatárs are painted with gemmed Ethiopian or Parthian coronets; with rays encircling their heads; jewels in their ears;" etc., etc.-" "they are naked to the waists, and uniformly with dark azure flesh, in allusion probably to the tint of that primordial fluid on which Nárayan moved in the beginning of time; but their skirts are bright yellow, the colour of the curious pericarpium in the centre of the water lily."-" They are sometimes drawn with that flower in one hand."-But Crishna, when he appears, as he sometimes does appear, among the Avatárs, is more spendidly decorated than any, and wears a rich garland of of silvan flowers, whence he is named Vanamáli; his ankles adorned with strings of pearls. Dark blue approaching to black, which is the meaning of Crishna, is believed to have been his complexion."—"That azure tint, which approaches to blackness, is peculiar, as we have already remarked, to Vishnu; hence in the great reservoir or cistern at Cátmándu, the capital of Népal, there is placed in a recumbent posture, a large well-proportioned image of blue marble, representing Nárayan floating on the waters."-Sir W. Jones's "Essay on the Gods of Greece, Italy, and India." DEAR MUSE! Thou'st been too negligent of me. What dost thou say ?-I've "been a truant child!” Something of both it very like may be; Why then, didst not reclaim me, if too wild?— Nurse me, and bring me flowers that th' honey-bee Had not yet woo'd, nor of their sweets beguil'd. Why didst thou let that jade, Miss Fortune, rend Thy posies from the hand thou would'st.befriend? II. Thou knowest I have slipshod gone by thee Till manhood's strength drew nigh, and set me free Where'er th' enamour'd fancy lov'd to be At liberty, to gaze on nature's prime, III. But come make now amends for past ill treatment; Lead me "where angels" might not "fear to tread,” Far from dark superstition's paths aberrant, Where thorn and thistle make poor fancy bleed. Her weary feet require a kind abluent, From the bemiring cross-roads of misdeed. Conduct then, to some purer source of pleasure, Some intellectual mine of unknown treasure! IV. That which thou dost contemplate;-yet, sweet Muse, We fain would ask one little boon of thee- And show, what yet remains on this our world, Which, our right worthy savants wish to know, V. With a most gracious nod, the Muse consents |