which, being wrapped in mud and thorns mixed with moss, is buried, and a tree or other memorial erected on the place. The ashes are thrown into the water, the spot where the pile stood is cleansed, and the deities convoked are dismissed with an oblation, which is thrown into the water, and thus the ceremony of gathering the ashes is completed.

On the last day of mourning, the heir puts on neat apparel, has his head and beard shaved and his nails cut, when he gives the barber the clothes worn during the performance of the obsequies, after which he anoints himself with oil of sesamum, and rubs his body with meal of the same, mixed with white mustard seed, bathes, sips water, touches auspicious things, and returns purified to his house, which concludes the first obsequy.

The Hindûs are not the only people who consider the touching or approaching a dead body as a defilement. The Jews, both ancient and modern, have the same superstition, (see the 21st chapter of Leviticus,) and the Egyptians, who were so anxious to embalm and preserve the dead, held those who touched them in abomination.

The next obsequy is the consolatory oblation, after which a bull is consecrated and let loose in honour of the deceased; I should be curious

tó ascertain whether this part of the ceremony is of the nature of turning the scape-goat loosed into the wilderness as loaded with the sins of the people among the Jews.

Various Sradd'has are performed monthly for the first year after the death of a relation, but those at the end of the third fortnight, the sixth › month, and the first anniversary are peculiarly holy. The first series of obsequies is intended to effect the re-embodying of the soul, and the second to raise the shade from this world to a place of happiness, for otherwise, like Homer's unburied heroes, it would wander

A naked, helpless, melancholy ghost.

Toperpetuate the felicity of progenitors ninetysix formal obsequies are performed in the course of the year, besides the daily oblations to the Manes, which I mentioned before. And now having fed, married, and buried my Hindû, I shall take leave of him and you for the present, satisfied if I have made you better acquainted, and shewed you at the same time that he is not very unlike some of the heroes of other times whom he has had the fortune, whether

good or bad I will not say, to outlive.

LETTER XV.

Your questions, my dear sir, concerning the barrows found in some parts of the interior of India, are in part answered by the injunction to plant a tree, or raise a mound of earth or masonry on the spot where a funeral pile has stood, or where a sepulchral urn is buried. Some of the artificial hillocks you mention, contain urns, in which bones, coins, and ornaments have been found, and others are heaped over rude stone tombs, in which similar vases are deposited.

Barrrows, from

"The mound

Of him who felt the Dardan's arrow,
That mighty heap of gathered ground,
Which Ammon's son ran proudly round,
By nations rais'd, by monarchs crown'd,"

to those on which the shepherd of Mona lies to see the green-clad fairies of his isle, while his flock feeds on its short herbage, are found in every part of the globe. The pile of stones in the African desert which hides the entrance to the sepulchral chamber of the Copt, the grassy hillock which breaks the horizon of the vast plains of Tartary, and the tomb of the Cacique which arrests the steps of the Lama

་

driver as he ascends the ridges of the Andes, all attest the desire of man to be after death. All when opened discover the signs of mortality, but all contain likewise some memorial for the future. In one it is the armour which helped to earn the warrior's fame, in another the simple implements which supplied the savage with his food, the pitcher from which he drank, or the axe which opened his path through the fo

rests.

In India the wife, the object of affection, perhaps of that delicate jealousy which dreads the change of sentiment even after death, accompanies the Hindû to his funeral pile. In America the savage

Thinks that transported to a better sky

His faithful dog shall bear him company.

The Scaldic warrior carried his armour to his tomb, that in the hall of Odin he might join the joyous battle of the Immortals, and as his manners softened and his creed improved, he still cherished the hope of living in the memory of those he left behind; hence the sword, the spur, and the banner were transferred from the Gothic cairn, to the Christian shrine, and the deep rooted principle of immortality connected man with his progenitors, through all the variations of time, of climate, and of religion.

We may leave to professed antiquarians the task of tracing the individual resemblances and

possible connection between these widely scattered tombs; our present business is with those of Hindostan, many of which are of unpolished stones, of a very large size erected on the plain, and not at all covered; and it is not uncommon on the road side, or in a grove, or other public place, to see a simple stone erected as a memorial of a Hindû soldier fallen in battle, near the spot where his rude monument stands. To the memory of kings and warriors, cenotaphs were sometimes erected; but the Hindû tombs which most attracted my attention, were some of very beautiful forms, which adorn a low point at the junction of the rivers Moot'ha and Moolha, near Poonah, raised to the memory of those pious widows who had ascended the funeral piles of their deceased lords.

A cemetery in the East is generally planted and adorned with flowers and sweet shrubs, in affectionate memory of departed friends; and I have often seen the shrub which marked the place of a grave, adorned before sunrise with chaplets of sweet mnogree and half blown roses. Where a holy person has been interred, a little temple is not unfrequently erected, which, like the shrine of a Romish saint, is hung with votive offerings, and crowded with suppliants. Such are the tombs of the Deos at Chimchore, a particular account of which I long ago sent you.