mythology might then have borne some resemblance to the Indian, and we might have instituted a comparison between the two. In the Indian mythology this strange combination, this inconsistent junction of the sublimest truth with the most sensual error, of the wildest and most extravagant fiction with the most abstract metaphysics, and even the purest natural theology (if we may thus call the divine Revelation of the primitive world); this strange combination, we say, has not been the effect of artful interpolation, but the fruit of native growth and of earliest development. We must now be on our guard not to admit too lightly or too quickly the coincidence of certain symbols and conceptions of mythology with truths and doctrines familiar to ourselves. How much, for instance, would a man err, who would suppose that there was any analogy in the Indian symbol and notion of _Trimurti_, or the divine Triad, I do not say with the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, but with the opinion of either of the Platonic schools on the triple essence, or the triple Personality of the one God. In this symbol the heads of the three principal Hindoo divinities, Brahma, Vishnoo, and Siva, the Gods of creation, preservation and destruction, are united in one figure; and this union undoubtedly indicates the primary energy common to all three. If we examine each in particular, we shall see that the attributes assigned to Brahma, and the expressions usually applied to his person, when divested of their poetical garb, and mythic accompaniments, may often, almost literally and in strict truth, be referred to the Deity. The all-pervading and self-transforming Vishnoo is much more the wonderful Prometheus of nature, than a real and well defined divinity. The third in this divine Triad, the formidable and destructive Siva, has but a very remote analogy with the Deity that judges and chastises the world according to justice. This God of destruction, whose worshippers appear to have been formerly the most numerous in India, as those of Vishnoo are at the present day; this God of destruction, with his serpents and bracelets of human skulls, appears evidently to be that demon of corruption who brought death into all creation, and who here, whimsically and inconsistently enough, has been introduced into the symbol, and made a part of the Deity itself. This union or confusion of Eternal Perfection with the Evil Principle is made in another way by the Indian philosophers; as some of them explain the doctrine of Trimurti, or the divine Triad by reference to the _Traigunyan_, or the three _qualities_. These three different regions, or degrees, into which, according to the Indian doctrine, all existence is divided, are the pure world of eternal truth, or of light, the middle region of vain appearance and illusion, and the abyss of darkness. However, it must be observed that the Indians do not express the pure and metaphysical idea