there exerted himself in penance and mortification, externally, with the sincerest piety, but, in reality, the most malignant intention, and with the determined purpose of oppressing the Devetas; penances such as credulity itself was astonished to hear; and they are here recounted:

1. For a hundred years, he held up his arms and one foot towards heaven, and fixed his eyes upon the sun the whole time.

2. For a hundred years, he remained standing on tip

toe.

3. For a hundred years more, he nourished himself with nothing but water.

4. For a hundred years more, he lived upon nothing but air.

5. For a hundred years more, he stood and made his adorations in the river.

6. For a hundred years more, he made those adorations buried up to his neck in the earth.

7. For a hundred years more, enveloped with fire. 8. For a hundred years more, he stood upon his head with his feet towards heaven.

9. For a hundred years more, he stood upon the palm of one hand resting on the ground.

10. For a hundred years more, he hung by his hand

from the branch of a tree.

11. For a hundred years more, he hung from a tree with his head downwards.

When he at length came to a respite from these se vere mortifications, a radiant glory encircled the devotee, and a flame of fire, arising from his head, began to consume the whole world."-From the Seeva Pooraun, MAURICE'S History of Hindostan. }

You see a pious Yogi, motionless as a pollard, holding his thick bushy hair, and fixing his eyes on the solar orb. Mark-his body is half covered with a white ant's edifice made of raised clay; the skin of a snake supplies the place of his sacerdotal thread, and part of it girds his loins; a number of knotty plants encircle and wound his neck, and surrounding birds' nests almost conceal his shoulders.

Dushmanta. I bow to a man of his austere devotion. -SACONTALA.

That even Seeva's self,

The Highest, cannot grant, and be secure.—VI. p. 55. It will be seen from the following fable, that Seeva had once been reduced to a very humiliating employment by one of Kehama's predecessors:

Ravana, by his power and infernal arts, had subjugated all the gods and demigods, and forced them to perform menial offices about his person and household. Indra made garlands of flowers to adorn him withal; Agni was his cook; Surya supplied light by day, and Chandra by night; Varuna purveyed water for the palace; Kuvera furnished cash. The whole nava-graha (the nine planetary spheres) sometimes arranged themselves into a ladder, by which, they serving as steps, the tyrant ascended his throne: Brahma (for the great gods were there also; and I give this anecdote as I find it in my memoranda, without any improved arrangement)-Brahma was a herald, proclaiming the giant's titles, the day of the week, month, &c. daily in the palace,-a sort of speaking almanack: Mahadeva, (i. e. Seeva,) in his Avatara of Kandeh-roo, performed the office of barber, and trimmed the giants' beards: Vishnu had the honourable occupation of instructing and drilling the dancing and singing girls, and selecting the fairest for the royal bed: Ganesa had the care of the cows, goats, and herds; Vayu swept the house; Yama washed the linen ;-and in this manner were all the gods employed in the menial offices of Ravana, who rebuked and flogged them in default of industry and attention. Nor were the female divinities exempted; for Bhavani, in her name and form of Satni,

was head Aya, or nurse, to Ravana's children; Lakshmi and Saraswati were also among them, but it does not appear in what capacity.-MOORE's Hindu Pantheon, p. 333.

"In

Seeva was once in danger even of annihilation : passing from the town of Silgut to Deonhully, says Colonel Wilks, I became accidentally informed of a sect, peculiar, as I since understand, to the north-eastern parts of Mysoor, the women of which universally undergo the amputation of the first joints of the third and fourth fingers of their right hands. On my arrival at Deonhully, after ascertaining that the request would not give offence, I desired to see some of these women; and, the same afternoon, seven of them attended at my tent. The sect is a sub-division of the Murresoo Wokul,* and belongs to the fourth great class of the Hindoos, viz. the Souder. Every woman of the sect, previously to piercing the ears of her eldest daughter, preparatory to her being betrothed in marriage, must necessarily undergo this mutilation, which is performed by the blacksmith of the village, for a regulated fee, by a surgical process sufficiently rude. The finger to be amputated is placed on a block; the blacksmith places a chisel over the articulation of the

* Murresoo, or Mursoo, in the Hala Canara, signifies rude, uncivilized ;-Wokul, a husbandman.

joint, and chops it off at a single blow. If the girl to be betrothed is motherless, and the mother of the boy have not before been subject to the operation, it is incumbent on her to perform the sacrifice. After satisfying myself with regard to the facts of the case, I enquired into the origin of so strange a practice, and one of the women related, with great fluency, the following traditionary tale, which has since been repeated to me, with no material deviation, by several others of the sect:

A Rachas (or giant) named Vrica, and in after times. Busm-aasoor, or the giant of the ashes, had, by a course of austere devotion to Mahadeo (Seeva) obtained from him the promise of whatever boon he should ask. The Rachas accordingly demanded, that every person on whose head he should place his right hand, might instantly be reduced to ashes; and Mahadeo conferred. the boon, without suspicion of the purpose for which it was designed.

The Rachas no sooner found himself possessed of this. formidable power, than he attempted to use it for the destruction of his benefactor. Mahadeo fled, the Rachas pursued, and followed the fugitive so closely as to chace him into a thick grove; where Mahadeo, changing his form and bulk, concealed himself in the centre of a fruit, then called tunda pundoo, but since named linga