AND RUIN'S AT MAVALIPURAM. 167 



This is a pretty juft account of this cuftom as it 

 prevails at this day in the Deckan ; for children are, 

 indeed, devoted to this profeffion by their parents; and 

 when they grow up in it, they are called, in Tamulic, 

 Devaddfi, or female /laves of the idol. But it is evident 

 they have changed their mafter fince this Arabian ac- 

 count was written, for there is no idol of the name of 

 Bod now worfhipped there. And the circumftance of 

 this cuftom being unknown in other parts of India^ 

 would lead one to fufpect that the Bramins, on intro- 

 ducing their fyltcm of religion into that country, had 

 thought fit to retain this part of the former worfhip, as 

 being equally agreeable to themfelves and their new 

 difciples. 



The fame Arabian traveller gives us an account of a 

 very powerful race of Hindoo Kings (according to them, 

 indeed, the moft powerful in India) who then reigned 

 on the Malabar Coalt with the title of Balhdra. Their 

 dominion appears to have extended over Guzerat, and 

 the greateft part, if not the whole, of the ancient king- 

 dom of Vifiapoor. For the Arabian geographer, quoted 

 by M. Renaudot, makes Nahelvdrah the metropolis 

 of thefe Princes, which is, doubtlefs, Nahehalah, the 

 ancient capital of Guzerat; though M. Renaudot 

 feems not to have known that place ; and the reft of 

 the description fufficiently fhows the great extent of 

 their dominion fouthward. M. D'Anville fpeaks of 

 this race of Kings on the authority of the Arabian, 

 geographer Edrisi, who wrote in the twelfth century, 

 according to whom it appears, that their religion was, 

 even fo late as that period, not the Braminical, but that 

 of which we are now fpeaking. M. D'A ville's 

 words are thefe: " Edrili acquaints us with tne reli- 

 " gion which this Prince profeffed, in faying, that his 

 " worfhip was addreffed to Bodda, who, according to 

 " St. Jerome, and Clemens Alexandrinus, was the 

 " founder of the fec~t of the Gymnofophifts, in like 



" manner 



