A complete dictionary of the Greek and Roman antiquities explaining the obscure places in classic authors and ancient historians relating to the religion, mythology, history, geography and chronology of the ancient Greeks and Romans, their ... rites and customs, laws, polity, arts and engines of war : also an account of their navigations, arts and sciences and the inventors of them : with the lives and opinions of their philosophers / compiled originally in French ... by Monsieur Danet ; made English, with the addition of very useful mapps.

BRACHMANES,

Brachmans, Philosophers, and Poets among the Indians. Strabo gives us an elegant Description of these Brachmans, and represents them to us, as a Nation devoted as much to Religion, as the Jews were.

As soon as their Children are born, their Doctors come and bless their Mothers, and give them some virtuous Instructions. While they are in their Infancy, they ap∣point them Masters, and accustom them to a thrifty way of Living. They teach their Philosophy in Woods, and allow none to marry, till they are Thirty Seven Years of Age; Their Life is very labo∣rious and mortifying, but after that they al∣low something more Liberty. Their Do∣ctrine was, that this Life is only a prepa∣ration and passage to an eternal and hap∣py Life to those who live well; That the joy, and grief, good and evil of this World are but Dreams and Fantoms. They were much of the same Opinions with the Greeks; that the World had a beginning, and should have an end. That God made it, governs it, is present in it, and fills it.

Strabo afterward relates a Discourse, which Alexander the Great had with one

of the most famous Brachmans, named Cala∣nus, who laughed at the rich Garments of Alexander, telling him, that in the Golden Age, Nature produced a great Plenty of those things, but now Jupiter had changed the State of Affairs and ob∣liged Men to procure themselves another sort of Plenty by Arts, Labour, and Thrif∣tiness; that Men began to abuse this second Favour, which was a just Reason to think that the World was now quite changed.

St. Clement of Alexandria speaks of the Brachmans almost in the same manner as Strabo. He assures us that they would not eat any living Creature, nor drink Wine; observed a continual Continency, eat but once a Day, and some of them only once in Two or Three Days; and that they looked upon Death, as a Passage into another Life.