OF THE HINDUS. 7I 



world, and in opposition to the Veddnta notions of the absence of every 

 quality and form, they assert that he has a body, formed of the five elements 

 of matter, and that he has mind endowed with the three Gunas, or qualities 

 of being ; of course of ineffable purity and irresistible power : he is free from 

 the defects of human natures, and can assume what particular shape he 

 will : in all other respects he does not differ from man, and the pure man, 

 the Sddh of the Kahir sect, is his living resemblance, and after death is 

 his associate and equal ; he is eternal, without end or beginning, as in fact is 

 the elementary matter of which he consists, and of which all things are 

 made residing in him before they took their present form, as the parts of the 

 tree abide in the seed, or flesh, blood and bone, may be considered to be 

 present in the seminal fluid : from the latter circumstance, and the identity 

 of their essential nature, proceeds the doctrine, that God and man are not only 

 the same, but that they are both in the same manner, every thing that lives 

 and moves and has its being : other sects have adopted these phrases literally, 

 but the followers of Kahir do not mean by them to deny the individuality of 

 being, and only intend these texts as assertions of all nature originally parti- 

 cipating in common elementary principles. 



The ParamapurusJia was alone for seventy-two ages, for after the Taura7nks 

 the Kabir Paul* his maintain successive and endless creations: he then felt a de- 

 sire to renew the world, which desire became manifest in a female form,* 

 being the Maya, from whom all the mistaken notions current amongst man- 

 kirid originate : with this female the Adi Bhavdni Prakriti or Sakli, the 

 Parama Purusha, or first male, cohabits, and begets the Hindu triad, 

 Brahma, Vishnu and Siva : he then disappears, and the lady makes advances 



* These notions are common to the whole Hindu system — diversified according to the fa- 

 vorite object of worship, but essentially the same in all sects ; we shall have occasion to discuss them 

 more fully under the division Saktus, or worshippers of Sakti. 



