ilO General Observations on [Feb. 



ently worshipped the same God and Genii originally — if not up to the very 

 period of their dividing in doctrine ; and the Buddhists still retained 

 these Genii or Devatas, in their theogony, although divested of the 

 superior potency formerly accorded to them — while both had lost sight 

 of the supreme Ruler of the universe. Numbers of the Buddhist 

 Priests too were brahmans — and some of these were learned in the 

 Vedas, containing doctrines which all the people who emigrated to India 

 from ancient Persia must, during a certain period, have known and 

 followed. 



It can be little matter of wonder then, that multitudes of the peo- 

 ple should have followed these converts, much less so if these were 

 priests — and I have not met with any mention of a regular brahman 

 priesthood at the time when Buddha the 4th, preached his doctrine. 

 But it is evident that the first converts at least were brahmans — men 

 well versed in brahmanical learning, as all the learned Buddhists 

 appear to have been from the earliest times of which any Buddhist 

 records remain, and were led to adopt Buddhism from a conviction of its 

 merits, founded on open discussion and a rigid comparison betwixt these 

 and those of their own dogmas. If a few brahman priests of acknow- 

 ledged sanctity were at the present day to expose the falsity of Hindu- 

 ism, without being persecuted for so doing, and to preach the moral- 

 ity of Christianity, as Buddha did that of some foregoing Indian sys- 

 tem, — we may suppose that the faith of the multitude would be shaken, 

 and that numbers would separate and follow the new apostles, even 

 although the fetters of superstition are much more firmly rivetted upon 

 them now than seem to have been those which shackled the Hindu of 

 B. C. 543. For one God worshipped then by the Hindus, they have 

 now tens perhaps. 



A new Avatar if now promulgated by the brahmanical priesthood, 

 acting in concert, would probably consign the whole of the Hindu Pan- 

 theon to Naraka. 



But these men, supposing even that they are not sincere in their 

 present belief, have no worldly motive, nor are likely soon to have one, 

 for repudiating their gods. There are no christian kings, and Adhi 

 Rajas, at whose right hands they can sit as counsellors, astrologers or 

 priests — the door of ambition is for them but narrow, and the objects 

 which at best could be gained were it laid widely open are, when 



