Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: of Japan, Buddhism is, with some few exceptions, the established religion. There will be occasion in the following pages of this treatise, to notice the forms of the religious structures of these nations, which, being built according to the general principle of idolaters, in imitation of the form of the created world, require some notices of the cosmography adopted by this numerous sect, which is briefly as follows. The disciples of Buddha maintain, that the world consists of a tall column, or pillar, some say round, others octangular, on the top of which the supreme god resides, surrounded by the earth and its inhabitants.z This they call the Maha Merit Pargwette, that is, the Great Merit Stone: Pargwette signifying stone, in the Pall language. This pillar is the centre of several cylinders, of which each exterior cylinder is of less height than the next interior. Each of these cylinders is the abode of some governing spirit. The forms of these cylinders are very various: some are triangular, some quadrangular, octangular, semicircular, and the like. These stand around a column of a circular shape, whose rounded summit is the earth, supported in the same manner as is signified by other ancient theories. The columnar forms stationed in the adjacent regions represent, though somewhat imperfectly, the sun and other heavenly bodies, not only of the solar system, but some of those stars which are fixed in the regions of infinite space. This theory of the Buddhists is evidently of a later age than the cosmography of the Brahmens; for the number of columnar structures standing on all sides of the central earth indicates a more extended acquaintance with the heavenly bodies, the result, doubtless, of a longer observation and continued study. This newer theory comprises all the prin...