On both sides of the comparison, the popular religion had a strong establishment.  In ancient Greece and Rome it was strictly incorporated with the state.  The magistrate was the priest.  The highest officers of government bore the most distinguished part in the celebration of the public rites.  In India, a powerful and numerous caste possesses exclusively the administration of the established worship; and are, of consequence, devoted to its service, and attached to its interest.  In both, the prevailing mythology was destitute of any proper evidence:  or rather, in both, the origin of the tradition is run up into ages long anterior to the existence of credible history, or of written language.  The Indian chronology computes eras by millions of years, and the life of man by thousands “The Suffec Jogue, or age of purity, is said to have lasted three million two hundred thousand years; and they hold that the life of man was extended in that age to one hundred thousand years; but there is a difference amongst the Indian writers of six millions of years in the computation of this era.” (Voyage de Gentil. vol. i. p. 244—­260.  Preface to the Code of Gentoo Laws, p. 57; quoted by Dr. Robertson, p. 320.) and in these, or prior to these, is placed the history of their divinities.  In both, the established superstition held the same place in the public opinion; that is to say, in both it was credited by the bulk of the people, but by the learned and philosophical part of the community either derided, or regarded by them as only fit to be upholden for the sake of its political uses.*

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* “How absurd soever the articles of faith may be which superstition has adopted, or how unhallowed the rites which it prescribes, the former are received, in every age and country with unhesitating assent, by the great body of the people, and the latter observed with scrupulous exactness.  In our reasonings concerning opinions and practices which differ widely from our own, we are extremely apt to err.  Having been instructed ourselves in the principles of a religion worthy in every respect of that Divine wisdom by which they were dictated, we frequently express wonder at the credulity of nations, in embracing systems of belief which appear to us so directly repugnant to right reason; and sometimes suspect that tenets so wild and extravagant do not really gain credit with them.  But experience may satisfy us, that neither our wonder nor suspicions are well founded.  No article of the public religion was called in question by those people of ancient Europe with whose history we are best acquainted; and no practice which it enjoined appeared improper to them.  On the other hand, every opinion that tended to diminish the reverence of men for the gods of their country, or to alienate them from their worship, excited, among the Greeks and Romans, that indignant zeal which is natural to every people attached to their religion by a firm persuasion of its truth.”  Ind.  Dis. p. 321.  That the learned Brahmins of the East are rational Theists, and secretly reject the established theory, and contemn the rites that were founded upon them, or rather consider them as contrivances to be supported for their political uses, see Dr. Robertson’s Ind.  Dis. p. 324-334. _________