on the ground. Never was superstition carried to such dreadful extremes; and what is thus sternly ordained has been known to be as rigidly executed, and is, in fact, at this day executing in India.

CHAP. XII.

On Transmigration and final Beatitude.

Such, as have been described, are the duties incumbent on the four great tribes: the ultimate reward, the radiant meed, of toiling virtue, is now to be revealed. Making a distinction between the vital spirit and the intellectual soul in man, the code declares man accountable to YAMA, the Hindoo Pluto, for the minutest ac tions of his life and the most hidden movements of his heart. Though the present body be consumed to ashes on the funeral pile, yet it affirms that another body, composed of finer nerves and elements, in order to be susceptible of torment, shall certainly be assumed by that soul hereafter. Sensible of these migrations, therefore, says Menu, let each man continually fix his heart on virtue: the Metempsychosis, therefore, was invented to build up mankind in virtue and piety. The human soul is declared to be

invested with three distinct qualities, that of goodness, of passion, and of darkness. Between the former and the two latter of these there is a violent and perpetual stuggle, and, as either the one or the other proves victorious, the soul either mounts upwards on eagle pinions to the celestial regions, its native and sublime abode; or is depressed to PATALA, the infernal regions, and becomes the companion of monsters engendered in darkness and fiends that delight in blood. Similar to the passions to which they devoted themselves on this probationary scene, will be the animal into which, in a future birth, the migrating soul will descend. The form of the furious lion and tiger will receive the soul in which anger and revenge predominate. Unclean and ravenous birds are the allotted mansion of souls polluted with lust and blinded by ambition. Noxious and loathsome reptiles are the abode of those debased by grovelling and sordid passions. To some, vegetable and mineral substances are the prison assigned. Of others, sharks, crocodiles, and a variety of aquatic monsters, are the destined repository. The profoundest caverns of the ocean, and the bowels of the highest mountains, swarm with transmigrating existences.

The code afterwards expressly adds, that, in the same precise degree that vital souls,

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addicted to sensuality, indulge themselves in forbidden pleasures, shall the acuteness of their senses be raised in their future bodies, that they may endure analagous pains. For the utterly abandoned, it mentions a place reserved of intense darkness; the sword-leafed forest, and other places of dreary exile, combined with multifarious tortures, await them: they shall be mangled by vultures and ravens; they shall swallow cakes boiling hot, alluding to the sacred cakes offered to the manes of their ancestors; shall walk over burning sands, and feel the parching flame as if baked in a furnace. They shall experience the alternate extremities of cold and heat, and be surrounded with unutterable horrors. All this shall they endure for innumerable ages, and then again begin their probationary career on earth.

After considering the Metempsychosis on the dark side of the portrait, in the descending scale, let us consider it in the ascending line.

The vital soul devoted to goodness and purity, that has passed the probationary terrestrial period in profound study of the Vedas, in practising severe austerities, in an entire command over the sensual organs; that has avoided all injuries to the brute creation, and has paid due reverence to parents; has insured to itself final beatitude. Some very sublime and noble

noble sentiments of the Deity succeed. A true knowledge of the ONE SUPREME GOD is declared to be the most exalted of sciences, for in that knowledge and in his adoration are comprised all the duties incumbent on man, on män, wandering in darkness and error, amid the nether spheres, but himself an emanation of the skies, a portion of the SUPREME SOUL, whence are diffused, like sparks from fire, innumerable vital spirits. Then follows this very elevated passage, which I shall give unabridged. "Equally perceiving the Supreme Soul in all beings, and all beings in the Supreme Soul, he sacrifices his own spirit by fixing it on the Spirit of God, and approaches the nature of that Sole Divinity who shines by his own effulgence." What great pity it is that a nation, who could think and write with such purity and sublimity on sacred subjects, should ever have debased their theology by extravagant allegories? but such is the genius of the Hindoos, and indeed of all the eastern nations, though the most frozen critic would scarely object to them, were they always as temperate as in the following instance. "As fire, with augmented force, burns up even humid trees, thus he, who well knows the Veda, burns out the taint of sin which has infected his soul." Having thus laboured to burn out the taint of

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sin from his polluted soul, (but why these strong and repeated expressions concerning the deep and radical stain with which the soul is contaminated, if they did not believe in original sin, and the fall of man?) having rigidly performed all the prescribed duties of his cast, the soul of the virtuous Indian, in the future scenes of its existence, migrates through and among objects as transcendently beautiful and delightful as the depraved spirit performs its painful peregrinations through creatures deformed and disgusting. Its destined receptacles hereafter are the loveliest and most enchanting objects in the vast limits of nature, and in the still more extended field of fancy. Elysiums, such as poets never yet feigned, and paradises, suchas inflamed enthusiasm, in its loftiest flight, never dared to conceive, await the beatified spirit. After bathing for ages in this abyss of joys, that it may be the better prepared for those of infinity, the pure spirit ascends the empyreum, and, in the first stage, joins the order of demi-gods, wafted in airy cars through the expanse of heaven, while the genii of the zodiacal signs and lunar mansions hail and embrace their delighted comrade. In the next stage, he mounts to the deities of the inferior heaven, and triumphantly joins the genii of the immortal Vedas, the re