In Cappadocia were many Puratheia; and the people followed the same manner of worship, as was practised in Persis. The rites which prevailed, may be inferred from the names of places, as well as from the history of the country. One city seems to have been denominated from its tutelary Deity, and called Castabala. This is a plain compound of Ca-Asta-Bala, the place or temple of Asta Bala; the same Deity, as by the Syrians was called Baaltis. Asta Bala was the Goddess of fire: and the same customs prevailed here as at Feronia in Latium. The female attendants in the temple used to walk with their feet bare over burning [708]coals. Such is the nature of the temple named Istachar; and of the caverns in the mountains of Chusistan. They were sacred to Mithras, and were made use of for his rites. Some make a distinction between Mithras, Mithres, and Mithra: but they were all the same Deity, the [709]Sun, esteemed the chief God of the Persians. In these gloomy recesses people who were to be initiated, were confined for a long season in the dark, and totally secluded from all company. During this appointed term they underwent, as some say, eighty kinds of trials, or tortures, by way of expiation. [710]Mithra apud Persas Sol esse existimatur: nemo vero ejus sacris initiari potest, nisi per aliquot suppliciarum gradus transierit. Sunt tormentorum ij lxxx gradus, partim intensiores.--Ita demum, exhaustis omnibus tormentis, sacris imbuuntur. Many [711]died in the trial: and those who survived were often so crazed and shaken in their intellects, that they never returned to their former state of mind. Some traces of this kind of penance may be still perceived in the east, where the followers of Mahomet have been found to adopt it. In the history given by Hanway of the Persian monarch, Mir Maghmud, we have an account of a process similar to that above, which this prince thought proper to undergo. He was of a sour and cruel disposition, and had been greatly dejected in his spirits; on which account he wanted to obtain some light and assistance from heaven. [712]_With this intent Maghmud undertook to perform the spiritual exercises which the Indian Mahommedans, who are more addicted to them than those of other countries, have introduced into Kandahar. This superstitious practice is observed by shutting themselves up fourteen or fifteen days in a place where no light enters. The only nourishment they take is a little bread and water at sun-set. During this retreat they employ their time in repeating incessantly, with a strong guttural voice, the word_ Hou, _by which they denote one of the attributes of the Deity. These continual cries, and the agitations of the body with which they were attended, naturally unhinge the whole frame. When by fasting and darkness the brain is distempered, they fancy they see spectres and hear voices. Thus they take pains to confirm the distemper which puts them upon such trials_.