Note 9 — Chapter II

1-60See Wilkins’ Bagvat-Gita, pp. 63-65. Ward, ii. 180. Also, Asiatic Researches, vol. xvii. pp. 169-313, containing an account of these Yogis, by Horace Hayman Wilson. One sect, we are told, have a way of contemplating Vishnu in miniature, by imagining the god in their heart, about the size of an open hand, and so adoring him from top to toe. In this gross conception of an indwelling deity these Hindoos do indeed exceed St. Theresa, who after swallowing the wafer conceives of Christ as prisoner in her inwards, and, making her heart a doll’s-house, calls it a temple. But beyond her, and beyond the Indians, too, in sensuousness, are the Romanist stories of those saints in whom it is declared that a post-mortem examination has disclosed the figure of Christ, or the insignia of his passion, miraculously modelled in the chambers of the heart.