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" Then what am I to suppose is your belief respect- ing Siva and Durga, Indra and Sachi, Agni, Kartikeya^ POPULAR DEITIES. 45 Varnna, Yama, and all the other names which I sometimes hear spoken of with veneration ?'* Sad. " You may, if you please, suppose me to conceive of them according to the pious traditions usually current among my countrymen, of the general bearing of which I imagine you are scarcely ignorant. Vishnu, for example, as the preserver of all things, may well be considered the highest, and with him Sri, or Lakshmf, as his bountiful associate in giving pro- sperity." " Again Siva, as the destroyer and rebuilder of various forms of life, has his place of worship, though I am not agreed with those who rank him above the preserver. With him, however, DurgA, or Pdrvatl the mountain-bom goddess of terror, may be mentioned, though she has also a milder aspect, as Bhavdni Then Indra, the god of the sky, may well deserve grateful oblations, and worship, as well as his consort Sachf ; for with- out the bounty of the sky, this Earth of ours would be barren and wretched. He may fairly also be called Maghavdn, the possessor of bliss. Nor again, do I suppose any one so blind or ungrateful, as to deny the benefits which men receive firom fire, and air, and water. All these then have their deities, Agni^ and Pavan, and Varuna, whom we honour as the lords of their several gifts or regions. So with Indra the god of heaven, I might have classed Surya the deity of the Sun, and the father of the twelve Adityas, who give us light in their turns; or I might have spoken of Gan^sa, who had once exclusive votaries, and whom now men chiefly invoke, when they commence any undertaking ; or of Manasd, the healer of mankind from the wounds of serpents. But I do not wish to perplex you with the various names and attributes of the deities, respecting some of which and their respective ranks all our teachers are not quite agreed. Suflice it generally, that from whatever quarter mankind derive any especial benefit, we think it reasonable to ascribe the good to some benignant ^vcr, and to honour the giver therefore with grateful offerings, 46 POPULAR DEITIES. as well as with the prescribed prayers. Bat besides those gracious and more bountiful beings, whom we honour as our preservers or benefactors, it is evident that there also exist in nature many terrible agencies, the influence of which we may well tremble at. Kartikeya, for instance, is the god of war, and Kali the goddess of bloodshed, whose terrors we think it not unnatural to avert, without inquiring nicely, whether she is distinct from Durg^, or only the same described as the dark goddess; but in either case, I do not see why it should be a mark of wisdom to ridicule us for deprecating the displeasure of a being powerful to injure. Then even beyond this life there is Yama the god of death, who as regards our certain removal may be termed inexorable, though either in postponing it, or in judging us mercifully when we stand before his tribunal, we hope he may be rendered propitious to us by prayer. Nor in- deed can I blame those who think no other deity so fit an object of their exclusive devotion as this gloomy king. With him may be classed his messenger Chitragupta, who conveys us to Yam-dlaya, the abode of death, and all the array of witnesses, who give account in that dread presence of all our words and actions; such as Swarga, Chandra, Pavan, and many others, there being no place either in heaven or earth, which does not send forth his embodied witness to give unerring testimony of what has been good or evil in each action of our lives." Blan. " Any such tribunal as you describe must certainly be a tremendous one to stand before. But how do you know so much of its nature?" Sad. " Perhaps something may be known respecting it in many ways ; but amongst others it is said that some one having been carried off once by Chitragupta in error, before his time was fiilly come, he returned to life, and described all the punish- ♦ ments which he had seen." Blan. " Upon my word, if we had happened to fall in with that person, I think we should have agreed to ask him a great many questions. For the subject is one so momentous^ that I KNOWLEDGE IMPLIES TRUTH. 47 cannot conceive any rational man's not feeling an interest in it But^your notion generally of the punishments is, I imagine, the same as that of other HindtLs. You made them consist in the necessity of undergoing some new form of existence, in which a man starts with advantages or disadvantages, corresponding in a way to his conduct in any previous life." Sad. " Very much that." Blan. '^ Then the highest reward will be freedom from any such necessity?" Sad. " Just so." Blax. ''Then for the fortunate person who has obtained such liberation there will remain only the tranquillity which our friend the Mtini has already described, as consisting in entire exemption from the anxieties of an isolated personality, and perhaps a communion in some way with the tranquil volition or the serene contemplation of the Supreme Spirit" Sad. " I will not object captiously to his way of describing it, or to your own ; only it is evident that the highest enjoy- ment must be in thorough knowledge, and the way to it is also through growth in knowing." Blan. '^ Does not this high estimation which you form of knowledge clearly imply that there is something to be known ?'* Sad. "Certainly." Blan. " And therefore that there is such a thing as positive truth, or that external things are in a certain way so fsu* as they exist, or that they have been acted in a certain way so far as they are facts, and a conception of these, according to the manner in which they really are or have been, must be know- ledge; so that truth in any man's thought or afErmation will require as its correspondent a certain external reality?" Sad. " I do not see how what you say can be denied." Blan. "Then if any one assured us that the internal conceptions of the mind bear no clear relation, or need not correspond to external things as they either exist or have been enacted^ or that there are no such spiritual realities as 48 HINDU SECTS. true ideas, or mental views of external things, to which we ought, as far as possible, to make our own notions approximate^ such a person would take away the very ideas of truth and knowledge, and consequently destroy the possibili^ of that highest liberation to which you think the human soul should aspire?" Sad. " Quite so." Blan. " Then it seems clear that we should not suffer our- selves lightly to be embarrassed by any difficulties which a man arguing for so despondent an opinion might possibly start ; but rather we should spare no effort to arrive at the truth, and keep alive in ourselves by all holy or wise methods a courageous hope of attaining it." Sad. " I certainly admit that by right methods the soul may learn to know, and it is the great triumph of the Sankhya philosophy to have devised such methods." Blan. " Very well. But you profess in part to accept the doctrines of Rim^uja; and again you profess a certain alle- giance to the religious books of the Brahmanical religion. Will then the venerable Achdry a here approve of your selecting Vishnu as the main object of your worship, or will he admit that the Supreme Being is most properly considered as the preserver ?" Sad. " Probably not, nor perhaps in some other things far more important, will he approve of the conclusions to which our philosophy leads us. He at least is, I believe, a worshipper by preference of Siva, and probably will not admit that human souls are each one essentially distinct from the other." Blan. " These differences, however, do not seem to make your religion in its general idea a different one?" Sad. " Certainly they do not ; for we agree in appealing to the same sacred books, as the traditionary depository of a reve- lation." Blan. ^^ Does it not then appear to you that the doctrine held is of more consequence than the book in which it is recorded?" Sad. " Why, without affirming or denying anything upon SA'NKHYA THEOLOGY.