CHAP. 6. which human beings are left to expire by hunger BOOK II. and disease, while reptiles are zealously tended and fed.1 "Although the killing an animal of this" (the ox) "kind is by all Hindus considered as a kind of murder, I know no creature whose sufferings equal those of the labouring cattle of Hindustan." (Buchanan, Journey, &c. i. 167.) See also Ward on the Hindus, Introd. p. xliii. An hospital for the sick poor, says Dr. Tennant, was never known in India, before the establishment of the British; though there were for dogs, cats, &c. (Indian Recreations, i. 73.) The authors of the Universal History inform us gravely, on the authority of Ovington, that the Hindus have a care for the preservation of fleas, bugs, and other vermin, which suck the blood of man: for in an hospital near Surat, built for their reception, a poor man is hired now and then to rest all night upon the kot or bed where the vermin are put; and lest their stinging should force him to take his flight before morning, he is tied down to the place, and there lies for them to glut themselves with human gore." (Modern Univ. Hist. vi. 262.) Anquetil Duperron, who describes a temple near Surat, full of those sacred animals, adds: “La vue de l'hôpital des animaux, entretenu par des êtres raisonnables avec tout l'ordre, le soin, le zèle même que l'on pourroit exiger d'eux, s'il étoit question de leur semblable, et cela même dans un pays, où il n'y a d'établissemens publics, ni pour les malades, ni pour les vieillards; la vue d'un pareil hôpital auroit de quoi étonner, si l'on ne sçavoit pas que la nature se plaît aux disparates en Asie comme en Europe. (Voyages aux Indes Orient.; Disc. Prélim. Zendavesta, i. ccclxii.) ،، The Gentoos, though they will not kill their neat, make no conscience to work them to death, allowing them hardly food to keep them alive. Neither are they less inhuman towards their sick, a woman being brought to die among the tombs in my sight." Fryer's Travels, ch. v. sect. 3. See to the same purpose, the Abbé Dubois, p. 132; Ward on the Hindoos, Introd. p. lv. It is worth observing that Milton, the universality of whose knowledge is not the least remarkable particular of his wonderful mind, was acquainted with the disgusting superstition of letting the vermin devour the man: "Like the vermin," says he, "of an Indian Catharist, which his fond religion forbids him to molest." Tetrachordon, Milton's Prose Works, ii. 122, 8vo. Edit. Tenderness to animals was a part of the religion of Zoroaster. We are informed in the Sadda, that he obtained from God a view of the regions of infernal torment, where he saw a number of kings, and among the rest one without a foot. He begged to know the reason, and God said to him; "That wicked king never performed but one good action in his life. He saw, as he was going to the chase, a dromedary tied at too great a distance from its provender, endeavouring to eat, but unable to reach it: he pushed the provender towards it with his foot. I have placed that foot in heaven; all the rest of him is here." Voltaire, Essai sur les Mœurs et l'Esprit de Nations, ch. v. The following, Porphyry tells us (De Abstin. lib. iv. BOOK II. Religion consists of two great doctrines; that concerning the nature and service of God; and that concerning the nature and destination of the human p. 431), were laws of Triptolemus, 1. To honour our parents; 2. To offer nothing to the gods but the fruits of the earth; 3. Never to hurt animals. "The inhabitants of Miniana," (a place not far from Sego, in the heart of Africa) "eat their enemies, and strangers, if they die in the country. They eat the flesh of horses. But such is their veneration for the cow, that she is never killed." Park's last Mission to Africa, p. 166. Mr. Richardson (see his Dissertation on Eastern Manners, p. 16) denies the authenticity of the fragments of the Zendavesta collected by Anquetil Duperron, on account of "the uncommon stupidity," as he is pleased to express it," of the work itself." Yet it is in a strain remarkably resembling that of the Vedas; the same sublime praises bestowed upon the Divinity; superstitions equally gross; discourses equally childish. We must not, however, on this account question the authenticity of the Vedas and the Puranas, though we must renounce the vulgar belief of the great wisdom of the Brahmens. In truth, the stupidity, as Mr. Richardson calls it, of the Zendavesta, and its remarkable similarity to the sacred books of the Hindus, is the most striking proof of its authenticity. There is the strongest reason to conclude that the ancient Magi, and the ancient Brahmens, were people very much upon a level; and that the fame of Zoroaster for wisdom is no better founded than that of the Indian sages. There is a radical difference, he says, between the language of the Zendavesta, and the modern Persian. (Ibid.) But the same is the case with the Sanscrit, which Sir William Jones thinks, from this circumstance, can never have been vernacular in Hindustan. (See Disc. on the Hindus, Asiat. Researches, i. 422.) The language, he says, of the Zendavesta has many words, which a modern Persian could not pronounce, but there are many words in the German language which an Englishman or Frenchman cannot pronounce, though the German is the basis of the languages of both. The Zendavesta, he says, contains Arabic words; but it contains Arabic only as the Greek contains Sanscrit. In fact, the identities which can be traced in all languages is one of the most remarkable circumstances in the history of speech. Of the Vedas, a man who had unrivalled opportunities of information informs us, "They contain nothing important or rational. In fact, they have nothing but their antiquity to recommend them. As to any thing further, they include all the absurdities of Hindu paganism, not only such as it has originally been, but also the pitiful details of fables which are at present current in the country, relating to the fantastical austerities of the Hindu hermits, to the metamorphoses of Vishnu, or the abominations of the lingam. The fourth of them, called Atharvana-veda, is the most dangerous of all for a people so entirely sunk in superstition, because it teaches the art of magic, or the method of injuring men by the use of witchcraft and incantation." (Description, &c. of the people of India, by the CHAP. 6. soul. In the complicated superstition of the Hindus, BOOK II. the first presented many questions which it needed a considerable accumulation of evidence to solve. Of the latter, a just idea may be speedily conveyed. It is well known that the metempsychosis, or the transmigration of the soul into various orders of being, reviving in one form, when it ceases to exist in another, is the tenet of the Hindus. This is a theory well calculated to present itself to the mind of the rude inquirer, when first excited to stretch his views beyond the present term of sensation and action. The vegetable life, which expires in the plant in autumn, revives in the seed in spring. The sluggish worm, which undergoes a species of death, and buries itself in a tomb of its own formation, springs again to life, a gay and active creature, as different in appearance, as in appetites and powers. Every thing on earth is changed, nothing annihilated; and the soul of the man who expires to day, revives in something else, to which life is at that instant imparted. Some very obvious, and very impressive appearances must have suggested the notion of the metempsychosis, since it is one of the most ancient, and one of the most general of all religious opinions. "No doctrine," says Dupuis, "was ever more universally diffused; none claims an origin so ancient, It reigned in the East, and in the West, among rude nations and polished nations; and it ascends to anti Abbé Dubois, p. 102.) Even the gayatri, the most holy of all holy things, is an assemblage, says the Abbé, of unmeaning terms, "unintelligible to the Brahmens themselves. I have never met with any one who could give me a tolerable explication of it." Ib. p. 79. CHAP. 6. BOOK II. quity so high, that Burnet ingeniously declares, one would believe it to be descended from heaven; so much it appears without father, without mother, and without descent." The Brahmens grafted upon it, in their usual way, a number of fantastic refinements, and gave to their ideas on this subject, a more systematic form than is usual with those eccentric theologians. They describe the mind as characterized by three qualities, goodness, passion, darkness. According as any soul is distinguished by one or another of those qualities in its present life, is the species of being into which it migrates in the life to come. Souls endued with goodness attain the condition of deities; those filled with passion receive that of men; those immersed in darkness are condemned to that of beasts. Each of these conditions, again, is divided into three degrees, a lower, a middle, and a higher. Of the souls distinguished by darkness, the lowest are thrust into mineral and vegetable substances, into worms, reptiles, fishes, snakes, tortoises, cattle, shakals; the middle pass into elephants, horses, Sudras, Mlec'hchhas, (a word of very opprobrious import, denoting men of all other races not Hindu,) lions, tigers, and boars; the highest animate the forms of dancers, singers, birds, deceitful men, giants, and blood-thirsty savages. Of the souls who receive their future condition from the quality of passion, the lowest pass into cudgel-players, boxers, wrestlers, Dupuis, Origine de tous les Cultes, tom. ii. par. 2, p. 181; where the reader will find authorities to prove the antiquity and diffusion of this peculiar doctrine. See, too, the learned Beausobre, Hist. de Manich. tom. ii. liv. vii. ch. 5, sect. 4. For its existence among the Mexicans, see Clavigero, book vi. sect. 1. CHAP. 6. actors, those who teach the use of weapons, and those BOOK II. who are addicted to gaming and drinking; the middle enter the bodies of kings, men of the fighting class, domestic priests of kings, and men skilled in the war of controversy; the highest become gandharvas, (a species of supposed aërial spirits, whose business is music,) genii attending superior gods, together with various companies of apsarases, or nymphs. Of the souls who are characterized by the quality of goodness, the lowest migrate into hermits, religious mendicants, other Brahmens, such orders of demigods as are wafted in airy cars, genii of the signs and lunar mansions, and Daityas, another of their many orders of superior spirits; the middle attain the condition of sacrificers, of holy sages, deities of the lower heaven, genii of the Vedas, regents of stars, divinities of years, Pitris, and Sadhyas, two other species of exalted intelligences; the highest ascend to the condition of Brahma with four faces, of creators of worlds, of the genius of virtue, and the divinities presiding over the two principles of nature. Besides this general description of the future allotment of different souls, a variety of particular dooms are specified, of which a few may be taken as an example. "Sinners in the first degree," says the ordinance of Menu," having passed through terrible regions of torture, for a great number of years, are condemned to the following births at the close of that period. The slayer of a Brahmen must enter the body of a dog, a boar, an ass, a camel, bull, a goat, a sheep, a stag, a bird, a Chandala, or a |
