230 
THE ORIENTAL ANNUAL. 
Then, on his knees, receiving a benediction, he 
returned to his palace; and the two impostors 
decamped with their booty. 
I think it will be scarcely too much to assert, that 
the Hindoos are more adicted to the marvellous than 
any other known nation upon earth. Their love of 
the miraculous, combined with their superstitious 
credulity, lays them open to every species of imposi- 
tion, both in action and in relation ; no fable is too 
absurd, no farce too monstrous for their belief. This 
perchance may be, in a degree, as some have asserted, 
their natural disposition ; but, truly, if there were 
no predisposition to the marvellous, it would be no- 
thing surprising to see a priest-ridden and idolatrous 
people reduced to any extremity of mental blindness. 
Their early historians and poets, knowing the dif - 
iiculty of moving the attention of a people whose 
taste had become thus vitiated, vied with each other 
in the concoction of extravagant improbabilities, and 
it would really appear that each monstrous absur- 
dity has given birth to a race of absurdities more 
monstrous than itself; for succeeding writers have 
outdone their predecessors, by continually adding 
invention to fable ; and the wildest conceptions 
invariably make the deepest impressions. The 
whole language of the Hindoos has become a heap 
of allegories ; and hence, truth and fiction are so 
continually blended, that it is impossible, on any 
occasion, to say where the one ends and the other 
