d future
Appearance--Rutrem--A Son with Seven Heads--The Seven
Stars as Nurses--Parvardi's Loss of her Husband and
Birth of a Son--Rutrem's Revenge and its
Consequences--The Indians' Offering to the Sun--The
Ganges--The Giant Piamejuran--Superstitious
Observances at Marriages--Disposal of Dead
Bodies--Different degrees of Glory after
Death--Reverence for the Cow--Ways of detecting
Criminals--Addressing Oracles--Astronomy--Eclipse of
the Moon--Magic--John Gondalez.

In Ethiopia, superstition was general over the entire empire. The
Ethiopians used a sacred bread, called the corban. While this bread
was being made, the baker was obliged to repeat seven psalms. Upon
every loaf there were twelve impressions of the cross, and each cross
was within a square. Ethiopian monks slept on a mat spread on the
ground, and before lying down they stretched out their hands one
hundred and fifty times in the form of a cross. Baptism was understood
by the people of this empire to be a solemn ceremony that washed away
all impurities; but the rite was observed by nearly all the ancient
nations, in memory of the Deluge.

In an account of the empire of the Great Mogul, we find no end of
superstitious observances. Each heathen Indian tribe had a separate
god. Some tribes even worshipped boiled rice; after the same manner
the Egyptians paid homage to leeks. Indian writers say that, in the
beginning, a woman, whose name was Paraxacti (brought into existence
by the great Creator), had three sons,--the first named Bruma, who
came into life with five heads. He was endowed with the power of
creating all inferior beings. The name of the second was Vixnu,
appointed lord of providence and preserver of all things formed by
Bruma. The third was named Rutrem, whose function or inclination was
to destroy all things his other two brothers had made and preserved.
Rutrem, like his brother Bruma, had five heads. Bruma assumed the form
of a stag; and, to punish him for a serious crime he committed when in
that shape, his brothers and thirty thousand millions of gods punished
him by cutting off one of his heads.

According to the notions of Indian heathens, Bruma writes upon the
forehead of every child an account of all that shall happen to him in
the world. It is reported of Vixnu that he metamorphosed himself at
pleasure. He first took the form and nature of a fish, and the second
form assumed