Gaudama[111] declares himself God and Lord for 5,000 years, during which time his ordinances must be kept. Gaudama declares himself the only true God, and states that there were many false gods of all descriptions. The doctrines of the false gods are called the laws of the six Deittì. Upon the appearance of Gaudama some renounced their errors, and others were conquered. The laws and ordinances of the Burmans are precisely similar to those which I mentioned in another place,[112] and therefore need not be repeated here. The observer of these commandments will finally become a great Nat or spirit. Besides the observation of these laws, there is merit in the deeds called Danà, and Bavanà. The first is charity to the priests, the second, the meditation of the three words Aneizz’a, Doechà, Anattà. The transgressors of the laws will be condemned to Niria, or one of the other places of punishment. In the course of 2,000 years the ordinances of Gaudama, 3,000 years having already elapsed, will no longer be binding, but another god will appear to give laws to the world. The images of Buddha or Gaudama are generally represented with a pleasant countenance; and, on the whole, his religion cannot be considered a severe one. “It unites,” as Dr. Buchanan Hamilton has remarked,[113] “the temporal promises of the Jewish, with the future rewards of the Christian dispensation; all its states of beatitude are represented in the glowing and attractive colouring of the Mohammedan paradise; and its various gradations of future punishment have the plausibility of purgatory; but its priests are not like those of the Roman Church, intrusted with the dangerous power of curtailing their duration.”[114] At Pegu, the deserted capital of the kingdom of that name, there is a celebrated temple, which Symes has well described in the Asiatic Researches, in an elaborate article on the city of Pegu, and it will not be inappropriate to transfer the account to my own pages:[115]—