Lieut.-Colonel Briggs' Memoir of iJie early Life of Nana Fameins. 1 07 



additional sanctity on these proceedings, priests became requisite, and idols 

 were manufactured at their suggestion, representing the pure divinity in a 

 fanciful personification. The transition from the worship of material resem- 

 blances of a divinity to that of eminent and worthy princes, who had gained 

 the hearts of their subjects, was simple, and accorded with the wishes of the 

 people. So that after the death of their heroes, we may easily imagine how 

 natural it was for the Hindus to place Rama, Lacsiiman, Hanuman, and 

 Crishna (no doubt once real characters) among the number of their gods. 

 It is thus, therefore, I think we may account for the existence of the 

 Hindu Pantheon of the present day. That some respect for the character 

 of these demi-gods prevails, even among the better classes of the Hindu 

 nation at this moment, cannot be denied ; but that learned Brahmins and 

 men well-informed, who are otherwise intelligent, worship them with any 

 degree of faith, may very fairly be doubted ; while it would appear that 

 Nana Farnevis had no such fliith, even when a boy. The whole tenour of 

 the manuscript I have translated proves that the belief in which he had 

 been brought up taught him to place his whole reliance on the • Only One.' 

 It is on him he was accustomed to call in the hour of danger and in the 

 day of battle, when all hope was lost. It was in him he placed his whole 

 trust and confidence, when unarmed he fell into the hands of the sanguinary 

 and relentless enemy. It was on him he called when tossed by the waters, 

 the vessel was almost sure of being dashed against the rocks ; and it was to 

 him, in his character of Vishnu the preserver, that he offered up his thanks 

 and devotions when he was almost miraculously snatched from the perils by 

 which he was surrounded. 



The exalted and pure notions that Nana Farnevis entertained of the 

 Creator, are strongly contrasted with his notions of the abject condition of 

 the creature. He describes man as a being compounded of perishable 

 materials, and who in his animal capacity is only capable of partaking of 

 worldly pleasure and pain, but wliose frame is filled with a portion of the 

 divine spirit, which, being separate from the body, animates it without 

 partaking of its mortality. A being so formed, he obsei-ves, is the sport of 

 OToya, or illusion, which urges him to follow the dictates of passion rather 

 tlian submit to the control of reason. It is a consciousness of this imbe- 

 cility, that induces him to confess with shame and remorse at how early a 

 period he felt the influence of those evil tendencies which he was unable to 

 control ; and he states his determination to go to some holy spot in order to 



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