ans have embraced the most solid of the two.

Next to these, remark those banners of an azure ground, painted with
monstrous figures of human bodies, double, triple, and quadruple, with
heads of lions, boars, and elephants, and tails of fishes and tortoises;
these are the ensigns of the sects of India, who find their gods in
various animals, and the souls of their fathers in reptiles and insects.
These men support hospitals for hawks, serpents, and rats, and they
abhor their fellow creatures! They purify themselves with the dung and
urine of cows, and think themselves defiled by the touch of a man! They
wear a net over the mouth, lest, in a fly, they should swallow a soul
in a state of penance,* and they can see a Pariah** perish with hunger!
They acknowledge the same gods, but they separate into hostile bands.

* According to the system of the Metempsychosis, a soul, to
undergo purification, passes into the body of some insect or
animal. It is of importance not to disturb this penance, as
the work must in that case begin afresh.

** This is the name of a cast or tribe reputed unclean,
because they eat of what has enjoyed life.

The first standard, retired from the rest, bearing a figure with four
heads, is that of Brama, who, though the creator of the universe, is
without temples or followers; but, reduced to serve as a pedestal to the
Lingam,* he contents himself with a little water which the Bramin throws
every morning on his shoulder, reciting meanwhile an idle canticle in
his praise.

* See Sonnerat, Voyage aux Indes, vol. 1.

The second, bearing a kite with a scarlet body and a white head, is that
of Vichenou, who, though preserver of the world, has passed part of his
life in wicked actions. You sometimes see him under the hideous form
of a boar or a lion, tearing human entrails, or under that of a horse,*
shortly to come armed with a sword to destroy the human race, blot out
the stars, annihilate the planets, shake the earth, and force the great
serpent to vomit a fire which shall consume the spheres.

* These are the incarnations of Vichenou, or metamorphoses
of the sun. He is to come at the end of the world, that is,
at the expiration of the great period, in the form of a
horse, like the four horses of the Apocalypse.

The third is that of Chiven, God of destruction and desolation, who has,
however, for his emblem the symbol of generation. He is t