538 
SUPERSTItlONS OBSERVED IN BOMBAY. 
they comply with their injunciioiRs, they will be cruelly tormented 
after death, and pass through a variety of transmigrations ; that they 
will be changed into mules, asses, rats, mice, Szc. 
The Chinese Bonzes, according to F. le Compte, are a gang of dis- 
solute idle fellows. All their aim is to excite people to commiserate 
their abject condition ; to which end they have recourse to various 
impostures. When the common arts of address fail them, they try 
what public penance will do. Some of them drag heavy chains, thirty 
feet long, after them ; some sit in the highway, knocking their heads 
against flint stones ; others set particular drugs on fire upon their 
heads ; all these are several ways of drawing the attention and 
exciting the compassion of the people, and they seldom fail of success. 
F. Navarette tells us that the Bonzes are obliged to chastity, and 
that, on the 6th of April, 1667, a petty king of Canton had con- 
demned eleven of them to be burnt alive for incontinence. He adds, 
that it was reported of an empress of the last reigning family, who 
had a particular kindness for the Bonzes, that she granted them a 
dispensation for three days. The Bonzes of China, according to the 
same author, are computed at fifty thousand. It has been observed, 
that there is so strong a likeness between the apparent worship of 
many of the priests of Fo, and that which is exhibited in churches 
of the Roman faith, that a Chinese conveyed into one of the latter 
might imagine the votaries he saw there were adoring the deities of 
their own country. On the altar of a Chinese temple, behind a screen, 
is frequently a representation which might serve for the Virgin Mary, 
in the person of “ Shinmoo,” or the Sacred Mother, sitting on an 
alcove, with a child in her arms, and rays proceeding from a circle 
which are called Glory, round her head, with tapers burning con- 
stantly before her. The long loose gowns of the ho-shangs, or priests 
of Fo, bound with cords round the waist, might almost equally suit 
the friars of the order of St. Francis ; the former live, like the latter, in a 
state of celibacy, reside together in monasteries, and impose occasion- 
ally upon themselves voluntary penance, and rigorous abstinence. 
Superstitions observed in Bombay. 
Mr. Ives had once an opportunity of observing the Persees per- 
form their devotions to fire. A large brass pan was placed in the 
middle of the floor, with fire in it; two men were kneeling at their de- 
votions, pronouncing their prayers w’ith great rapidity. He was after- 
wards informed that one of them was a priest, at that time on a visit 
to another priest in a fit of sickness. He was likewise told that the 
Persees have such a veneration for fire, that they never put it out, or 
even breathe upon it; and he observed, that while the two priests 
were at their prayers over the pan of coals, they had a little white 
bib over their mouth, as he supposed, to prevent their breath from 
approaching their favourite element. The prayers, however, from 
the similarity of the sounds, appeared to him only to be a repetition 
-of the same set of words. The visiting priest used many gestures 
with his hands over the fire, and afterwards stroked down the face of 
the sick person, which Mr. Ives considered the final benediction, as 
the ceremony ended immediately. 
