Oriental customs: or an illustration of the sacred Scriptures, by an explanatory application of the customs and manners of the Eastern nations, and especially the Jews. Therein alluded to, together with observations on many difficult and obscure texts, collected from the most celebrated travellers, and the most eminent critics / by Samuel Burder.

  • Samuel Burder
Date:
1802
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Oriental customs: or an illustration of the sacred Scriptures, by an explanatory application of the customs and manners of the Eastern nations, and especially the Jews. Therein alluded to, together with observations on many difficult and obscure texts, collected from the most celebrated travellers, and the most eminent critics / by Samuel Burder. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    The person of the devil they look on as sacred, and when they affirm any thing solemnly, they do it bv his name. All disrespectful expressions of him they would punish with death, did not the Turkish power prevent them. Whenever they speak of him, it is with the ut- most respect; and they always put before his name a certain title corresponding to that of highness, or lord.” (p. 318.) The Benjans, in the East Indies, (according to the Abbe de Guyon, in his history of that country) fill their temples or pagodas with his statues, designed in all the horrid extravagance of the Indian taste. ’ The king of Calicut, in particular, has a pagoda wholly filled with the most frightful figures of the devil, which receives no other light than what proceeds from the gleam of a multitude of lamps. In the midst of this kind of cavern is a copper throne, whereon a devil formed of the «ame metal is seated, with a tiara of several rows on his head, three large horns, and four others that spring out of his forehead. He has a large gaping mouth, out of which come four teeth like the tusks of a boar. His chin is furnished with a long and hideous beard. He has a crooked nose, large squinting eyes, a face frightfully inflamed, fingers crooked like talons, and paws rather than feet. His breasts hang down upon his belly, where his hands are laid in a negligent posture ; from his belly arises another head, uglier if possible than the first, with two horns, and a tongue hanging out prodigiously large, and behind him a tail like a cow’s. On his tongue and in his hand there are two figures almost round, which the Indians say are souls that he is preparing to devour. (Hist, of East 2nd. part. ii. c. 2. s. 1.) No. 594.—xi. 3. I will give power unto my two wit- nesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth.'] Sackcloth ap- pears to have been made of hair, and as to its colour to