thing that can provoke jealousy.  Their marriages are solemnised in great pomp.  After the molah has joined their hands, with certain ceremonies and words of benediction, they begin their revels at the first watch of the night.  Whether the man be poor or rich, he mounts on horseback, attended by his friends, having many oressets, or great lights, carried before him, and accompanied by drums, and wind-instruments of music, and various pageantry.  The woman follows with her friends, in covered coaches.  And having thus paraded through the principal places of the city or town, they return home and partake of a banquet, the men and women being in separate apartments.  They are mostly married at the age of twelve or thirteen, the matches being made by their mothers.

Sec.4. Of the Sects, Opinions, Rites, Priests, and other Circumstances of the Hindoo Religion; with other Observations.

The Hindoos[239] are distributed into eighty and four several sects, all of which differ materially in opinions.  This has often filled me with wonder; but I know that they are all deluded by Satan, who is the father of division.  Their illiterate priests are called Bramins, being the same with the Brachmanni of the ancients; and, for aught I could learn, are so sottishly ignorant and unsteady, that they know not what they believe.  They have little round-built temples, which they call pagodas, in which are images in most monstrous shapes, which they worship.  Some of them dream, of Elysian fields, to which their souls pass over a Styx or Acheron, and there assume new bodies.  Others hold that ere long, this world shall have an end, after which they shall live here again, upon a new earth.  They talk of four books which were sent them about 6000 years ago by their prophet Ram, two of which were sealed up and might not be opened, the other two being read by the Bramins only.  They say that there are seven orbs, above which is the seat of God; and they hold that God knoweth not of petty things, or, if he doth, regardeth them not.  They circumscribe God in place or dimensions, alleging that he may be seen, but far off as in a mist, and not near or clearly.  They believe in the existence of devils or evil spirits; but that they are so bound in chains, as to be incapable of doing hurt.  They call man Adam, from the first man of that name; whose wife, as they say, when tempted with the forbidden fruit, swallowed it down; but, as her husband was about to do the same, it was stopped in his throat by the hand of God:  Whence men have a protuberance in that part, which we call the pomum adami, which women have not.

[Footnote 239:  By Terry, the Hindoos are uniformly denominated the Gentiles, a word of vague and general meaning, merely signifying idolaters, or unbelievers, literally the nations, as contradistinguished from the Jews.  By some authors, the natives of Hindoostan are called Gentoos, a word of uncertain origin.  The term of Hindoo seems the more appropriate name; at least it has now become universal.—­E.]