3 



another opportunity of seeing his concubines and female attend- 

 ants in a state of terror and distress to which the Hindoo women 

 are seldom accustomed. We lamented the pride, vanity, and want 

 of feeling in the Asiatics thus exposing the tender sex to tne 

 fatigues and dangers of war. 



Many religious brahmins and strict professors among the high 

 casles of Hindoos censured Ragobah for undertaking a voyage by 

 sea, in which they alleged he not only deviated from the esta- 

 blished laws and customs of his tribe, but thought he acted con- 

 trary to ihe divine injunction. He might have pleaded that 

 " necessity has no law," for he certainly had no other alternative. 

 The religious Hindoos, like the ancient Magi, and many of their fol- 

 lowers among the modern Parsces, consider the sea as a sacred 

 element; and, as Tacitus observes of the Parthian magi, " to spit 

 in it, or to defile the purity of the waters by the superfluities of 

 the human body, was held to be profane and impious." 



The Greeks and Romans seem also to have had a natural dread, 

 if not an aversion to the sea, and a horror of dying, or being ship- 

 wrecked on that element, and by that means deprived of the fune- 

 ral rites and ceremonies which they deemed essential. Ovid, 

 miserable as he was on his banishment, seemed to prefer even 

 death itself to the danger of a voyage by sea, most probably from 

 a fear of being consigned to the deep without the rites of burial. 



" Demite naufragium, mors mihi munus erit." 



" Death would my soul from anxious troubles ease, 

 " But that I fear to perish by the seas." 



The voyage from Surat to Cambay was uninteresting; hazy 



