HYMN TO CAMDEO. THE ARGUMENT. doo god, to whom the following poem is adappears evidently the same with the Grecian the Roman Cupido; but the Indian description son and arms, his family, attendants, and attrinew and peculiar beauties. ng to the mythology of Hindoostan, he was Maya, or the general attracting power, and Retty, or Affection; and his bosom friend is or Spring: he is represented as a beautiful metimes conversing with his mother and con e midst of his gardens and temples; sometimes moonlight on a parrot or lory, and attended by girls or nymphs, the foremost of whom bears rs, which are a fish on a red ground. His fa lace of resort is a large tract of country round principally the plains of Matra, where Krishen the nine Gopia, who are clearly the Apollo es of the Greeks, usually spend the night with ad dance. His bow of sugar cane, or flowers ing of bees, and his five arrows, each pointed Indian blossom of a heating quality, are allegolly new and beautiful. He has at least twenty. nes, most of which are introduced in the hymn: am, or Cama, signifies desire, a sense which it -s in ancient and modern Persian; and it is pos. t the words Dipuc and Cupid, which have the nification, may have the same origin, since that the old Hetruscans, from whom great part oman language and religion was derived, and ystem had a near affinity with that of the PerIndians, used to write their lines alternately = and backwards, as furrows are made by the and, though the two last letters of Cupido may the grammatical termination as in libido and yet the primary root of cupio is contained in the ee letters. The seventh stanza alludes to the -mpt of this deity to wound the great god Mahawhich he was punished by a flame consuming IMITATIONS. hoever thou art, know that the black gusts of had seized the garden; but the king of the gain appeared, dispensing justice to all: in his he happy cupbearer desired and obtained the wine. Be cheerful," &c. subdue. THE HYMN. WHAT potent god from Agra's orient bowers Know'st thou not me ?" Celestial sounds I hear! God of each lovely sight, each lovely sound, Thy consort mild, Affection ever true, God of the flowery shafts and flowery bow, He bends the luscious cane, and twists the string these strains I hoped to celebrate this delight→y may they be a memorial to its inhabitants, He with five flowerets tips thy ruthless darts, Dry Nagkeser, in silver smiling, Can men resist thy power, when Krishen yields, O thou for ages born, yet ever young TWO HYMNS TO PRACRITI. THE ARGUMENT. In all our conversations with learned Hindoos, we find them enthusiastic admirers of poetry, which they consider as a divine art, that had been practised for number several books of Tasso, and to the dramas of Metastasio, are obvious instances; but, that any interest may be taken in the two hymns addressed to Pracriti, under different names, it is necessary to render them intelligible by a previous explanation of the mythological allusions, which could not but occur in them. Iswara, or Isa, and Isani, or Isi, are unquestionably the Osiris and Isis of Egypt; for, though neither a resemblance of names, nor a similarity of character, would separately prove the identity of Indian and Egyp tian deities, yet, when they both concur, with the addition of numberless corroborating circumstances, they form The female divia proof little short of demonstration. nity, in the mythological systems in the East, represents the active power of the male; and that Isi means active nature appears evidently from the word s'acta, which is derived from s'acti, or power, and applied to those Hindoos who direct their adoration principally to that goddess: this feminine character of Pracriti, or created nature, is so familiar in most languages, and even in our own, that the gravest English writers, on the most serious subjects of religion and philosophy, speak of her operations as if she were actually an animated being; but such personifications are easily misconceived by the multitude, and have a strong tendency to polytheism. The principal operations of nature are, not the absolute annihilation and new creation of what we call material substances, but the temporary extinction and reproduction, or rather, in one word, the transmutation of forms: whence the epithet Polymorphos is aptly given to nature by European philosophers: hence Iswara, Siva, Hara, (for those are his names and near a thousand more) united with Isi, represent the secondary causes, whatever they may be, of natural phenomena, and principally those of temporary destruction and regeneration; but the Indian Isis appears in a variety of characters, especially in those of Parvati, Cali, Durga, and Bhavani, which bear a strong resemblance to the Juno of Homer, to Hecate, to the armed Pallas, and to the Lucretian Venus. The name Parvati took its rise from a wild poetical fic tion. Himalaya, or the Mansion of Snow, is the title given by the Hindoos to that vast chain of mountains, which limits India to the north, and embraces it with its eastern and western arms, both extending to the Ocean; the former of those arms is called Chandrasec'hara, or the Moon's Rock; and the second, which reaches as far west as the mouths of the Indus. was named by the ancients Montes Parveti. These hills are held sacred by the Indians, who suppose them to be the terrestrial haunt of the god Iswara. The mountain Himalaya, being per sonified, is represented as a powerful monarch, whose wife was Mena: their daughter is named Parvati, or Mountain-born, and Durga, or of difficult access; but the Hindoos believe her to have been married to Siva in a pre-existent state, when she bore the name of Sati. The daughter of Himalaya had two sons; Ganesa, or the Lord of Spirits, adored as the wisest of deities, and always invoked at the beginning of every literary work, and Cumara, Scanda, or Carticeya, commander of the celes less ages in heaven, before it was revealed on earth by The pleasing fiction of Cama, the Indian Cupid, and his friend Vasanta, or the Spring, has been the subject of another poem: and here it must be remembered, that the god of Love is named also Smara, Candarpa, and Ananga. One of his arrows is called Mellica, the Nyctanthes of our botanists, who very unadvisedly reject the vernacular names of most Asiatic plants: it is beautifully introduced by Cálidasa into this lively couplet; Mellicamucule bhati gunjanmattamadhuvratah, Prayane panchaoanasya sanc'hamapurayanniva. "The intoxicated bee shines and murmurs in the fresh blown Mellica, like him who gives breath to a white conch in the procession of the god with five arrows." A critic to whom Cálidasa repeated this verse, observed, that the comparison was not exact: since the bee sits on the blossomn itself, and does not murmur at the end of the tube, like him who blows a conch. "I was aware o ages, and is so far from being a perfect imi. scrupulous exactness of descriptions and -aving nothing for the imagination to supply, diminish or destroy the pleasure of every as an imagination to be gratified. be observed, that Nymphæa, not Lotos, is ame in Europe of the flower consecrated to rsians know by the name of Nilufer that which the botanists ridiculously call Nelumhis remarkable for its curious pericarpium, of the seeds contains in miniature the leaves egetable. The lotos of Homer was probably me, and that of Linnæus is a papilionaceous gives the same name to another species of a; and the word is so constantly applied India to the Nilufer, that any other would elligible: the blue lotos grows in Cashmir =, but not in Bengal, where we see only the e; and hence occasion is taken to feign, that Hindoostan was dyed crimson by the blood entioned in the fourteenth stanza, is the god pposed to reside in a magnificent city, called Vrihaspati, or the genius of the planet Jupi receptor of the gods in Swerga or the firma. usually represented as their orator, when is carried from them to one of their superior stations of Reti, the wife of Cama, fill a whole Fanscrit poem, as I am informed by my teach. Vaidya; who is restrained only from read which contains a description of the nuptials; monies of a marriage where Brahma himself the father of the bridegroom, are too holy to y any but Brahmins. vements of Durga in her martial character ness of Virtue, and her battle with a demon of a buffalo, are the subject of many episodes as and Cávyas, or sacred and popular poems; account of them would have destroyed the ode, and they are barely alluded to in the proper to change the measure, when the to be addressed as Bhavani, or the power ; but such a change, though very common in as its inconveniences in European poetry & an is therefore appropriated to her in that For the explanation of which we need only at Lacshmi is the goddess of abundance; that s a fragrant and beautiful plant of the Diœcian n to botanists by the name Pandanus; and urgótsava, or great festival of Bhavani at the =rains, ends in throwing the image of the god. he Ganges, or other sacred waters. t conscious of having left unexplained any usion in the two poems; and have only to add Dean critics should consider a few of the images able to Indian manners) that the ideas of snow e familiar to the Hindoos; that the mountains ya may be clearly discerned from a part of at the Grecian Hamus is the Sanscrit word eaning snowy; and that funeral urns may be etually on the banks of the river. o hymns are neither translations from any ms, nor imitations of any; and have nothing of them except the measures, which are nearly syllable for syllable, with those of the first and emean Odes: more musical stanzas might per: e been formed; but in every art, variety and are considerable sources of pleasure. The manner of Pindar have been greatly mistaken; a distinet idee which are printed in Italic letters. TO DURGA. I. 1. FROM thee begins the solemn air, Adored Ganésá; next, thy sire we praise, I. 2. Rock above rock they ride sublime, I. 3. Nor e'en the fiercest summer heat Could thrill the palace, where their monarch reign'd But she to love no tribute paid; On a morn, when, edged with light, A vale remote and silent pool she sought, II. 2. Not for her neck, which, unadorn'd, |