'34 Mr. H. T. Colebrooke on the PJiilosophy of the Hindus. 



Error, or obscurity, mistakes irrational nature, intellect, consciousness, or 

 any one of the five elementary atoms, for the soul, and imagines liberation 

 to consist in absorption into one of those eight prolific principles. 



Conceit, termed illusion, imagines transcendent power, in any of its eight 

 modes, to be deliverance from evil. Thus beings of a superior order, as 

 Indra and the rest of the gcds, who possess transcendent power of every 

 sort, conceive it to be perpetual, and believe themselves immortal. 



Passion, called extreme illusion, concerns the five objects of sense; sound, 

 tact, colour, savour, and odour ; reckoned to be twice as many, as different 

 to man and to superior beings. 



Envy, or hatred, denominated gloom, relates to the same ten objects of 

 sense, and to eiglit-fold transcendent power, fiu'nishing the means of tlieir 

 enjoyment. 



Fear, named utter darkness, regards the same eighteen subjects, and consists 

 in the dread of ill attendant on their loss by death or by deprivation of power. 



Disability of intellect, which constitutes the second class, comprising 

 twenty-eight species, arises from defect or injury of organs, which are 

 eleven : and to these eleven sorts are added the contraries of the two next 

 classes, containing, the one nine, and the other eight species, making a total 

 of twenty-eight. Deafness, blindness, deprivation of taste, want of smell, 

 numbedness, dumbness, handlessness, lameness, costiveness, impotence, and 

 madness, are disabilities preventing performance of functions. 



Content, or acquiescence, which forms the third class, is either internal 

 or external : the one four-fold, the other five-fold ; viz. internal, 1st, con- 

 cerning nature ; as, an opinion that a discriminative knowledge of nature is 

 a modification of that principle itself, with a consequent expectation of 

 deliverance by the act of nature. 2d, Concerning the proximate cause •, 

 as a belief that ascetic observances suffice to ensure liberation. 3d, Con- 

 cerning time ; as a fancy that deliverance will come in course, without 

 study. 4th, Concerning luck ; as a supposition that its attainment depends 

 on destiny. External acquiescence relates to abstinence from enjoyment 

 upon temporal motives: namely, 1st, aversion from the trouble of acquisi- 

 tion ; or, 2d, from that of preservation ; and, 3d, reluctance to incur loss 

 consequent on use ; or, 4th, evil attending on fruition ; or, 5th, offence of 

 hurting objects by the enjoyment of them. 



The perfecting of the intellect is the fourth class, and comprises eight 

 species. Perfection consists in the prevention of evil ; and tliis being three- 



