________________
208
Yoga is prescribed in modern times. This inhibition is, however, disregarded, and the individuals who are the subjects of our enquiry endeavour to attain the super- -human powers which the performance of the Yoga is supposed to confer. They especially practice the various gesticulations and postures of which it consists, and labour assiduously to suppress their breath and fix their thoughts until the effect does somewhat realise expectation, and the brain, in a state of over-wrought excitement, bodies forth a host of crude and wild conceptions, and gives to airy nothings a local habitation and a name'. A year's intense application is imagined enough to qualify the adept2,
RELIGIOUS SECTS
Some who have commenced their career in this line, have carried the practice to several hours' duration, at which time they have described themselves as becoming perfectly exhausted, with strange objects passing before them, and sparks of fire flashing in their eyes. One individual quitted it from having at last a figure resembling himself always before him, and knowing this to be a deception, he wisely inferred the similar character of any other visionary creature of his contemplation and the absurdity of the practice. DUBOIS has some amusing anecdotes on this subject (page 357, &c.), they are fully authenticated by the similar accounts which many Vairágis in Upper India will readily furnish. The worthy ABEE may indeed be generally trusted when he confines himself to what he saw or knew: in much that he heard he was misled, and in almost every thing connected with the language and literature and the religion or philosophy, as taught by classical authority, he commits egregious blunders.
2
ब्रह्मचारी मिताहारी योगी योगपरायणः । अब्दादूर्द्ध भवेत्सिद्दी नात्र कार्या विचारणा ॥
"Leading a life of chastity and abstemiousness, and diligent
