ITALY, AND INDIA, 235 



the fountains of the deep; and the fourth exhibits the 

 miraculous punifhment of pride and impiety. Firft, 

 as we have fhown, there was, in the opinion of the 

 Hindus, an interposition of Providence to prefe'rve a 

 devout perfon and his family (for all the Pandits agree, 

 that his wife, though not named, muft be understood 

 to have been faved with him) from an inundation, by 

 which all the wicked were deltroyed : next, the power 

 of the deity deicends in the form of a boar, thefymbolof 

 flrength, to draw up and Support on his tufksthe whole 

 earth, which had been funk beneath the ocean: thirdly, 

 the fame power is reprefented as ztortoife fuftaining the 

 globe, which had been convulfed by the violent affaults 

 of demons; while the Gods churned the fea with the 

 mountain Mandar, and forced it to difgorge the facred 

 things and animals, together with the water of life, 

 which it had {'wallowed. Thefe three Hones relate, I 

 think, to the fame event, Shadowed by a moral, a meta- 

 phySical, and an aftronomical, allegory : and all three 

 feem connected with the hieroglyphical fculptures of 

 the old Egyptians, The fourth Avatar was a lion 

 Hfuing from a burfting column of marble to devour a 

 blafpheming monarch, who would otherwife have Slain 

 his religious fori ; and of the remaining fix, not one has 

 the lead relation to a deluge. The three which are 

 afenbed to the Treta yug, when tyranny and irreligion 

 are faid to have been introduced, were ordained for the 

 overthrow of tyrants, or their natural types, giants 

 with a thoufand arms, formed for the molt extenSive 

 oppreffion : and, in the Dwapar yug, the incarnation of 

 Crijlina was partly for a fimilar purpofe, and partly 

 with a view to thin the world of unjuit and impious 

 men, who had multiplied in that age, and began to 

 fwarm on the approach of the Cali yug, or the age of 

 conttntion and baleneSs. As to Buddha^ he feems to 

 have been a reformer of the doctrines contained in the 

 Vedas ; and though his good-nature led him to cenfure 

 thofe ancient books, becaufe they enjoined facrificesof 



S % cattle, 



