The funeral pyre.—"The women," said Setoc, "have possessed the right of burning themselves for more than a thousand years; and who shall dare to abrogate a law which time hath rendered sacred? Is there anything more respectable than ancient abuses?"

       "It would appear then," said Zadig, "that there must be a very delicious pleasure in being burnt alive."

      "Oh! it makes me shudder," replied the lady, "but that must be overlooked. I am a devotee; I should lose my reputation; and all the world would despise me, if I did not burn myself."

      Zadig having made her acknowledge that she burned herself to gain the good opinion of others, and to gratify her own vanity, entertained her with a long discourse calculated to make her a little in love with life, and even went so far as to inspire her with some degree of good will for the person who spoke to her.

      "And what wilt thou do at last," said he, "if the vanity of burning thyself should not continue?"

      "Alas!" said the lady, "I believe I should desire thee to marry me."

      Zadig's mind was too much engrossed with the idea of Astarte not to elude this declaration; but he instantly went to the chiefs of the tribes, told them what had passed, and advised them to make a law by which a widow should not be permitted to burn herself, till she had conversed privately with a young man for the space of an hour. Since that time not a single widow hath burned herself in Arabia. They were indebted to Zadig alone for destroying in one day a cruel custom that had lasted for so many ages; and thus he became the benefactor of Arabia.

XII.

       Table of Contents

      THE SUPPER.

      Setoc, who could not separate himself from this man in whom dwelt wisdom, carried Zadig to the great fair of Balzora, whither the richest merchants of the earth resorted. Zadig was highly pleased to see so many men of different countries united in the same place. He considered the whole universe as one large family assembled at Balzora. The second day he sat at table with an Egyptian, an Indian, an inhabitant of Cathay, a Greek, a Celtic, and several other strangers, who, in their frequent voyages to the Arabian Gulf, had learned enough of the Arabic to make themselves understood.

      The Egyptian seemed to be in a violent passion. "What an abominable country," said he, "is Balzora! They refuse me a thousand ounces of gold on the best security in the world."

      "How!" said Setoc. "On what security have they refused thee this sum?"

      "On the body of my aunt," replied the Egyptian. "She was the most notable woman in Egypt; she always accompanied me in my journeys; she died on the road. I have converted her into one of the nest mummies in the world; and in my own country I could obtain any amount by giving her as a pledge. It is very strange that they will not here lend me a thousand ounces of gold on such a solid security."

      Angry as he was, he was going to help himself to a bit of excellent boiled fowl, when the Indian, taking him by the hand, cried out in a sorrowful tone, "Ah! what art thou going to do?"

      "To eat a bit of this fowl," replied the man who owned the mummy.

      "Take care that thou dost not," replied the Indian. "It is possible that the soul of the deceased may have passed into this fowl; and thou wouldst not, surely, expose thyself to the danger of eating thy aunt? To boil fowls is a manifest outrage on nature."

      "What dost thou mean by thy nature and thy fowls?" replied the choleric Egyptian. "We adore a bull, and yet we eat heartily of beef."

      "You adore a bull! is it possible?" said the Indian.

      "Nothing is more possible," returned the other; "we have done so for these hundred and thirty-five thousand years; and nobody amongst us has ever found fault with it."

      "A hundred and thirty-five thousand years!" said the Indian. "This account is a little exaggerated. It is but eighty thousand years since India was first peopled, and we are surely more ancient than you are. Brahma prohibited our eating of ox-flesh before you thought of putting it on your spits or altars."

       Oannes—the Fish God.—"Thou art mistaken," said a Chaldean. "It is to the fish Oannes that we owe these great advantages; and it is just that we should render homage to none but him. All the world will tell thee, that he is a divine being, with a golden tail, and a beautiful human head; and that for three hours every day he left the water to preach on dry land."

      OANNES—THE FISH AVATAR.

      "The accompanying engraving of the fish-god is from a drawing by Gentil, given in Calmet's Dictionary. The god was worshiped under the name of Dagon by the Syrians, and Oannes by the Chaldeans. The image represented the body of a fish with the head and arms of a man; and while all figures of the god are not exactly alike, they all combine a human form with that of a fish.

      "Owing to the precession of the equinoxes," says the Rev. Mr. Maurice in the Antiquities of India, "after the rate of seventy-two years to a degree, a total alteration has taken place through all the signs of the ecliptic, insomuch that those stars which formerly were in Aries have now got into Taurus, and those of Taurus into Gemini. Now the vernal equinox, after the rate of that precession, could not have coincided with the first of May less than 4000 years before Christ."

      An Avatar in the form of the celestial Taurus (♉) then occurred, and Osiris was worshiped in the form of a bull, by credulous believers. Next in the course of revolving years, we have the celestial Aries, (♈) and the god then became incarnate in the form of a lamb, and in that form received the adoration of devout multitudes. Later still the Zodiacal sign had progressed to Pisces, (♓) and mankind were then called upon to worship the astrological emblem of the amphibious being called Oannes—the sacred god of the land and the sea—whose representative on earth still claims to be the Great Fisherman, and who has entangled in the meshes of his net of faith the intellects and consciences of innumerable devotees.

      "In Berosus and other authors," says Godfrey Higgins in the Anacalypsis, "the being half man, half fish, called Oannes, is said to have come out of the Erythræan Sea, and to have taught the Babylonians all kinds of useful knowledge. This is clearly the fish Avatar of India; whether or not it be the I-oannes of Jonas I leave to the reader. I apprehend it is the same as the Dagon of Pegu and the fish sign of the Zodiac. Very little is known about it, but it exactly answers the description of an Avatar.

      "The apostles of Jesus, I believe, were most of them fishermen. There are many stories of miraculous draughts of fish, and other matters connected with fishes, in the Gospel histories; and Peter, the son of John, I-oannes or Oannes, the great fisherman, inherited the power of ruling the church from the Lamb of God. The fisherman succeeded to the shepherd. The Pope calls himself the great fisherman, and boasts of the contents of his Poitrine.

      "In the Pentateuch, which is the sacred book of the Israelites, we meet with no Dagon, Fish or God. But we do meet with it in the book of Judges. I believe this Dagon to be the fish Avatar of India—the Dagon of Syrian in Pegu; in fact the emblem of the entrance of the sun into Pisces.

      "In the earliest time, perhaps, of which we have any history, God the creator was adored under the form or emblem of a Bull. After that, we read of him under the form of a calf or two calves, afterward