58
HISTORY OF INDIA.
[Book IV.
A.D.
doctrine of a transmigration of souls, which, having been borrowed from them by the Greeks, has received the name of metempsychosis. According to this Dogma of doctrine, the present life is intended not so much for probation as for transition.
transmigra- . . , , ,
tion. As a general rule, the soul on quitting the body passes into another, and thus
commences a new life, no longer, it may be, in the form of a liuman being, but in that of a lower animal, or even of a vegetable. There is no necessity for confining this curious process to the future, and hence it is actually extended to both the present and the past. All the forms of life now existing are animated by beings who, though utterly unconscious of the fact, previously existed, and owe their present place in the scale of being to the course of conduct which they then pursued. Those in the lower and more degrading forms are paying the penalty of former misdeeds ; those more favourably situated are entitled, besides congratulating themselves on their good fortune, to take credit for a fund of merit of which they are now reaping the reward. This strange doctrine leads
itspemici- directly to important practical results. Poverty, misfortune, and all the ills
ous effects
on society which flcsh is heir to, we have been taught to regard as divine dispensations, sent more in mercy than in judgment, and designed for the moral improvement, both of the sufferers themselves, and of those who only witnessed their suffer- ings. While the former are invited to look upward, and aspire to a better happiness than this world can bestow, the latter are enjoined to sympathize with the distresses, and minister as stewards of the divine bounty to the necessities of their less fortunate brethren. The Hindoo view does not allow any such lessons to be taught. It first identifies misfortune with crime, com- mitted in the present or in a former life, and then refuses to relieve it, on the hypocritical pretext that to do so were to thwart the design of the deity by whom the penalty is inflicted. This is not a theoretical inference, but a well ascertained fact; and hence, when, as not unfrequently happens, the flesh of one of the swinging devotees gives way, and he is dashed down to instant death, the spectators either look on with apathy, or give utterance to their belief that lie would not have been killed in this way if he had not deserved it.
Tliis hardness of heart, steeling a man against his fellow, and making him indifferent to his fate, is not the only pernicious consequence of the dogma of transmigration. While it destroys mutual sympathy, and thus deprives society of one of the strongest bonds by which its stability and good order are maintained, it operates still more injuriously on the individual. Life has an object truly worthy of the name, when it is regarded as the period during which immortal happiness must be gained, or for ever forfeited. On the contrary, when it is regarded as nothing more than one in a series of metamorphoses, of which many have already taken place and others are to follow in almost endless succession, its main interest is destroyed, and it becomes incapable of furnishing the necessary incentive to piety and virtue in the shape of a final and eternal reward. What the human soul longs for, after it has been made sensible of its
( )n indivi- duals.
