PREFACE.

THE Reader, during this continued Dissertation on the INDIAN THEOLOGY, is earnestly requested occasionally to advert to the ample prospectus prefixed to it in a former portion of this work by that means, he will be better enabled to comprehend the plan pursued by the author in the course of so extensive an investigation. From consecrated groves and subterraneous caverns, he is here introduced into those stupendous structures, the pagodas of Hindostan; and as, in the former volume, the Indian and Egyptian sacred caverns were compared, so, in the present, the parallel is extended to the erected temples of either country, The same

eminent Sanscreet scholars, MR. HALHED, SIR WILLIAM JONES, and MR. WILKINS, who were his guides before in discussing the mysterious rites paid in those caverns to the solar orb and fire, and in unfolding all the wonders of the sidereal metempsychosis, will attend his progress through the DELTA and the THEBAIS; and, for the first time that the attempt has in any extent been undertaken, the Antiquities of INDIA will be made to illustrate those of EGYPT.

The Author would have been happy to have concluded in this volume his strictures on the Indian Theology, but he found that the very, curious and interesting subject of the ORIENTAL TRIADS OF DEITY opened so vast a field for inquiry, and, withal, led to such important consequences in our own system of theology, that it was utterly impossible to contract it within the narrow limits he had prescribed himself. The present is by no means the period for suppressing any additional testimonies to the truth of one of the fundamental articles of that noble system, and he trusts that he has brought together such a body of evidence as will decisively

establish the following important facts; first, that in the SEPHIROTH, or THREE SUPERIOR SPLENDORS, of the ancient Hebrews may be discovered the three hypostases of the CHRISTIAN TRINITY; secondly, that this doctrine flourished through nearly all the empires of Asia A THOUSAND YEARS BEFORE PLATO WAS BORN; and, thirdly, that the grand cavernpagoda of ELEPHANTA, the oldest and most magnificent temple of the world, is neither more nor less than A SUPERB TEMPLE TO A TRI-UNE GOD.