temples and sculptures, like those of Salsette and Elephanta, cut out of the solid rock, on the Coromandel coast, that there anciently prevailed in India, or at least in the Peninsula, a system of religion, very different from that inculcated in the Vedas, and, in some respects, totally inconsistent with the principles and practice of the present Brahmins. This religion, he asserts, still flourishes in the farther Peninsula, particularly among the Siamese, between whom and the inhabitants of the Decan and Ceylone, it is evident, from his dissertation, that a considerable intercourse, in very remote periods, has subsisted. Mr. Chambers supposes this religion to be the worship of the God BOODH above-mentioned, whose votaries, Mr. Knox observes, took particular pride in erecting to his honour temples and high monuments, "as if they had been born solely to hew rocks and great stones, and lay them up in heaps."* Their kings, he adds, are now happy spirits, having merited heaven by those stupendous labours. In the treatise referred to above, among other evidences of the probability of his supposition,. Mr. Chambers has inserted a passage from M.

See Knox's curious, and I believe, authentic, historical account of the island of Ceylone; published at London, 1681..

Gentil, who remarked, in the neighbourhood of Verapatnam, a statue of granite, very hard and beautiful, probably of many thousand weight, but half sunk in the deep sand, and standing, as it were, abandoned in the midst of that extensive plain. He observed, " that it exactly resembled THE SOMMONACODOM, or principal stone deity of the Siamese, in the form of its head, in its features, and in the position of its arms; but that it bore no similitude to the present idols of the Hindoos; and, upon enquiry of the Tamulians, he was constantly informed, that it was the God BOODн, who was now no longer regarded, since the Brahmins had made themselves masters of the people's faith." The idol-deity, represented by the Sommonacodom, was, among the Siamese, what Confucius was among the Chinese. His history and the rites of his religion are involved in the deepest gloom of mythology. According to the Balic books, he was born of a father and mother who had reigned in Ceylone, and seems himself to have extended his wide jurisdiction, both as a king and as a prophet, not only over that island, but over a great part of the Two PENINSULAS. He was endowed with the most extraordinary strength and activity of body, to overthrow dæmons and giants in combat; and, by severe mortification and

intense piety, he had arrived at the knowledge of the past, present, and future. It is remarkable, however, that the Brahmins, while they rejected the religious worship of BOODн, which, at present, flourishes in Ceylone and Siam, retained one peculiar and agreeable appendage of that religion: "the women, or female slaves, of the idol." These, as we have before observed," are public women, devoted in infancy to this profession by their parents, in gratitude for some favour obtained from the propitious idol." Those, who wish for a farther account of the doctrines and ceremonious rites of ВOODн, may be gratified by reading the dissertation alluded to in the Asiatic Researches; the account of Mr. Loubere,* envoy at Siam, in 1687; and Mr. Knox's curious and authentic history of Ceylone.

But not merely in many of the rites practised, and the images venerated among the Indians, have the strongest features of resemblance between that nation and the Egyptians been discovered; it seems apparent, in the very structure of their most ancient and most hallowed pagodas. The temples of Egypt, indeed, are in general

* A considerable extract, from this account of LOUBERE and the Jesuits, is inserted in Harris's Voyages, vol. ii. p. 465.

of a height and magnitude still more astonishing; but in their figure, design, and embellishments, they are strikingly similar. If the reader will consult the pages of the celebrated Egyptian travellers of the seventeenth century, attentively consider their various relations, and accurately inspect the engravings, exhibited by those travellers, of its magnificent but mouldering shrines, he will find this assertion verified in a manner equally pointed and surprising.

In Mr. Gough's short view of the ancient monuments of India, which is accompanied with neat etchings of the drawings of Niebuhr, whose voluminous and expensive publications few have leisure to read or inclination to purchase, this prevailing correspondency is represented in a very forcible point of view. "Let us for a moment," says the ingenious writer, "form a comparison between these Indian buildings and those of Egypt, on which so much more description and drawing have been bestowed. Let us turn our eyes to the superb temples of Luxor and Medinet-Habou, Esnay, and Edfy, and the palace of Memnon, described by Pococke and Norden, and we shall discover a striking resemblance even in the pillars, the ornaments, and the reliefs. The temple of the serpent Cnuphis, in an island, called also

anciently Elephantina, is an oval building, supported by pillars, forming a cloister or aisle. Similar to this is that in the ancient island of

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Philaë. In most of these, are pillars fluted or clustered, like the Indian ones; and the rocks on both sides of the Nile are hollowed into grottoes, not unlike the buildings which are raised on the surface of the desert plains. The similar structures, which Mr. Norden describes in Nubia, are on the same plan; and, if we may judge from the few representations we have yet seen of the famous pagoda of Chillambrum, on the Coromandel coast, the resemblance approaches near to the Nubian and Egyptian temples."* A French Traveller of merit, however, whom I have frequently had occasion to cite, having more recently journied over the same ground, I prefer the presenting of his description of the ruins of temples of the Thebais to the reader; and he will himself, perhaps, be more gratified by an actual spectator's account of that grand sepulchre of ancient arts and sciences, EGYPT.

I shall begin the few quotations I shall make from M. Savary, by stating à very singular circumstance; a circumstance by no means the

*See a comparative view of the ancient monuments of India, published by Mr. Nichols in 1785, p. 15.