here, for the natives of Malabar, and other parts of the peninsula of India, who are all formed to the ecclesiastical state in other countries, and return, for the most part, men of corrupted morals. On the day of my return to _Puduceri_, I had an opportunity of seeing a very singular scene; as on that day the god Apis was led in procession through the city. This deity was a beautiful fat red-coloured ox, of a middle size. The Brahmans generally guard him the whole year through in the neighbourhood of his temple; but this was exactly the period at which he is exhibited to the people with a great many solemnities. He was preceded by a band of Indian musicians; that is to say, two drummers, a fifer, and several persons who with pieces of iron beat upon copper basons. Then came a few Brahmans, and behind these was an immense multitude of people. The Pagans had all opened the doors of their houses and shops, and before each stood a small basket with rice, thin cakes, herbs, and other articles in which the proprietors of these houses and shops used to deal. Every one beheld Apis with reverence; and those were considered fortunate of whose provisions he was pleased to taste a mouthful as he passed. Philarchus conjectured, as we are told by Plutarch in his treatise on Isis and Osiris, that Apis was originally brought from India to Egypt by the inhabitants of the latter. Plutarch himself asserts that the Egyptians considered Apis as an emblem of the soul of Osiris; and, perhaps, he here meant to say, that under this expression they understood that plastic power by which Osiris had produced and given life to every part of the creation. I shall, in another place, endeavour to prove, that Osiris was nothing else than the Sun, and consequently what among the Indians is represented by the idol _Shiva_, or _Mahadèva_. Hence it happens, that this _Shiva_, the emblem of the Sun, rides on an ox; and that in the solemn invocations of the Brahmans he is called _Pashupadi_, that is, _the man of the cow_. The cow again is nothing else than a symbol of the goddess _Ishami_, or the woman, as the Indians are accustomed to call the Isis to whom the cow is dedicated when they speak of her by her sacred name. On the Egyptian monuments Osiris, as the symbol of the Sun, is represented with rays around his head; and his wife Isis bears horns, the symbol of the cow, and also of the new moon, between which and the sun there is the same relation as between wife and husband. On the Indian monuments the idol _Shiva_ has an ox under him; and the goddess _Ishami_, as she is represented in one of the oldest Indian temples, is leaning with one of her arms on a cow[21]. Pliny in his Natural History, speaking of Apis, makes use of the following remarkable words: “When he eats out of the hand of those who come to consult him, it is considered as an answer. He refused to have any thing from the hand of Germanicus Cæsar, and the latter soon