HERESY, divided into different sects. For this reading was afterwards substituted that of various apocryphal works, or at least of extracts from them. The author of the Synopsis of Scripture, which we find among the works of St. Athanasius, expressly avows that there are in the apocryphal books things most true and inspired by God, which have been selected and extracted for the perusal of the faithful. BOURGES. OUR questions have but little to do with geography; but we shall, perhaps, be permitted to express in a few words our astonishment respecting the town of Bourges. The Trevoux Dictionary asserts, that "it is one of the most ancient in Europe, that it was the seat of empire of the Gauls, and gave laws to the Celts." I will not combat the antiquity of any town or of any family. But was there ever an empire of Gaul? Had the Celts kings? This rage for antiquity is a malady which is not easily cured. In Gaul, in Germany, and in the north, there is nothing ancient but the soil, the trees, and the animals. If you will have antiquities, go to Asia; and even there they are hardly to be found. Man is ancient, but monuments are new: this has already been said in more articles than one. If to be born within a certain stone or wooden limit more ancient than another were a real good, it would be no more than reasonable to date the foundation of the town from the Giants' war: but since this vanity is in nowise advantageous, let it be renounced. This is all I have to say about Bourges. BRACHMANS-BRAHMINS. COURTEOUS reader, observe in the first place, that father Thomassin, one of the most learned men of *Tom. ii. page 134. modern Europe, derives the Brachmans from the Jewish word barac, by a-supposing, of course, that the Jews had a c. This barac, says he, signified to fly; and the Brachmans fled from the towns, supposing that there were any towns. Or, if you like it better, Brachmans comes from barack by a k, meaning to bless or to pray. But why might not the Biscayans name the Brahmins from the word bran? which expresses-I will not say what. They had as good a right as the Hebrews. Really, this is a strange sort of erudition. By rejecting it entirely, we should know less, but we should know it better. t Is it not likely that the Brahmins were the first legislators, the first philosophers, the first divines, of the earth? Do not the few remaining monuments of ancient history form a great presumption in their favour? since the first Greek philosophers went to them to learn mathematics; and the most ancient curiosities, those collected by the emperors of China, are all Indian, as is attested by the relations in Du Halde's collection. Of the Shastah, we shall speak elsewhere. It is the first theological book of the Brahmins, written about fifteen hundred years before their Vedah, and anterior to all other books. Their annals make no mention of any war undertaken by them at any time. The words arms, killing, maiming, are to be found neither in the fragments of the Shastah that have reached us, nor in the Yajurvedah, nor in the Kormovedah. At least, I can affirm that I have not seen them in either of these two latter collections; and it is most singular that the Shastah, which speaks of a conspiracy in heaven, makes no mention of any war in the great peninsula between the Indus and Ganges. The Hebrews, who were unknown until so late a period, never name the Brahmins; they knew nothing of India till after Alexander's conquests, and their own settling in that Egypt of which they had spoken so ill. The name of India is to be found only in the book of Esther, and in that of Job, who was not a Hebrew.* We find a singular contrast between the sacred books of the Hebrews and those of the Indians. The Indian books announce only peace and mildness; they forbid the killing of animals: but the Hebrew books speak of nothing but the slaughter and massacre of men and beasts; all are butchered in the name of the Lord; it is quite another order of things. We are incontestably indebted to the Brahmins for the idea of the fall of celestial beings revolting against the Sovereign of Nature; and it was probably from them that the Greeks took the fable of the Titans; and lastly, from them it was that the Jews, in the first century of our era, took the idea of Lucifer's revolt. How could these Indians suppose a rebellion in heaven without having seen one on earth? Such a leap from the human to the divine nature, is difficult of comprehension. We usually step from what is known to what is unknown. A war of giants would not be imagined, until some men more robust than the rest had been seen to tyrannise over their fellow-men. To imagine the like in heaven, the first Brahmins must either have experienced violent discords among themselves, or at least have witnessed them among their neighbours. Be this as it may, it is an astonishing phenomenon that a society of men, who have never made war, should have invented a sort of war carried on in imaginary space, or in a globe distant from our own, or in what is called the firmament-the empyrean. But let it be carefully observed, that in this revolt of the celestial beings against their Sovereign, there were no blows given, no celestial blood spilt, no mountains thrown at one another's heads, no angels cleft in twain, as in Milton's sublime and grotesque poem. According to the Shastah, it was only a formal disobedience of the orders of the Most High, which God punished by relegating the rebellious angels to a vast * See JOB. + See MATERIAL HEAVEN. place of darkness called Onderah, for the term of a whole mononthour. A mononthour is a hundred and twenty-six millions of our years. But God vouchsafed to pardon the guilty at the end of five thousand years, and their onderah was nothing more than a purgatory. He turned them into Mhurd, or men, and placed them on our globe, on condition that they should not eat animals, nor cohabit with the males of their new species, on pain of returning to the Onderah. These are the principal articles of the Brahmin faith, which has endured without intermission from time immemorial to the present day. This is but a small part of the ancient cosmogony of the Brahmins. Their rites, their pagods, prove that among them all was allegorical. They still represent Virtue in the form of a woman with ten arms, combating ten mortal sins typified by monsters. Our missionaries were acute enough to take this image of Virtue for that of the devil, and affirm that the devil is worshipped in India. We have never visited that people but to enrich ourselves and calumniate them. The Metempsychosis of the Brahmins. The doctrine of the metempsychosis comes from an ancient law of feeding on cow's milk as well as on vegetables, fruits, and rice. It seemed horrible to the Brahmins to kill and eat their feeder; and they had soon the same respect for goats, sheep, and all other animals: they believed them to be animated by the rebellious angels, who were completing their purification in the bodies of beasts as well as in those of men, The nature of the climate seconded, or rather originated this law. A burning atmosphere creates a necessity for refreshing food, and inspires horror for our custom of stowing carcases in our stomachs. The opinion that beasts have souls was general throughout the east, and we find vestiges of it in the ancient sacred writings. In the book of Genesis, God forbids men to eat "their flesh with their blood and their soul." Such is the import of the Hebrew text. "I will avenge," says he, "the blood of your souls on In Le the claws of beasts and the hands of men.' viticus he says, "The soul of the flesh is in the blood."+ He does more; he makes a solemn compact with man and with all animals, which supposes an intelligence in the latter. In much later times, Ecclesiasticus formally says, "God shows that man is like to the beasts; for men die like beasts; their condition is equal: as man dies, so also dies the beast. They breathe alike. There is nothing in man more than in the beast."§ Jonas, when he went to preach at Nineveh, made both men and beasts fast. All ancient authors, sacred books as well as profane, attribute knowledge to the beasts; and several make them speak. It is not then to be wondered at, that the Brahmins, and after them the Pythagoreans, believed that souls passed successively into the bodies of beasts and of men consequently they persuaded themselves, or at least they said, that the souls of the guilty angels, in order to finish their purgation, belonged sometimes to beasts, sometimes to men. This is a part of the jesuit Bougeant's romance, who imagined that the devils are spirits sent into the bodies of animals, Thus, in our day, and at the extremity of the west, a jesuit unconsciously revives an article of the faith of the most ancient Oriental priests. The Self-burning of Men and Women among the Brahmins. The Brahmins of the present day, who do all that the ancient Brahmins did, have, we know, retained this horrible custom. Whence is it that, among a people who have never shed the blood of men or of animals, the finest act of devotion is a public selfburning? Superstition, the great uniter of contraries, is the only source of these frightful sacrifices, the custom of which is much more ancient than the laws of any known people. The Brahmins assert that their great prophet Brama, the son of God, descended among them, and had seve * Genesis, c. ix. v. 4, 5. + Leviticus, c. xvii, v. 14, Genesis, c. ix. v. 10, &c. |