Book II.

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 antiquity 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. Ac-
cording 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'has,
(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, actors, those who teach the use of weapons, and those 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 con-
troversy; 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 exalted by the quality
of goodness, the lowest migrate into hermits, religious mendicants, other Brah-
mens, 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 Sad-
hyas, two other species of exalted intelligences; the highest ascend to the condi-
tion of Brahma with four faces, of creators of worlds, of the genius of virtue, and

* 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.

the divinities presiding over the two principles of nature.* Besides this general CHAP. VI. 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, a bull, a goat, a sheep, a stag, a bird, a Chandala, or a Puccasa. He, who steals the gold of a priest, shall pass a thousand times into the bodies of spiders, of snakes, and camelions, of crocodiles, and other aquatic monsters, or of mischievous blood-sucking demons. He who violates the bed of his natural or spiritual father, migrates a hundred times into the forms of grasses, of shrubs, with crowded stems, or of creeping and twining plants, carnivorous animals, beasts with sharp teeth, or cruel brutes." † After a variety of other cases, a general rule is declared, for those of the four castes who neglect the duties of their order: "Should a Brahmen omit his peculiar duty, he shall be changed into a demon, with a mouth like a firebrand, who devours what has been vomited; a Cshatriya, into a demon who feeds on ordure and carrion; a Vaisya, into an evil being who eats purulent carcases; and a Sudra, who neglects his occupations, into a foul embodied spirit, who feeds on lice." The reward of the most exalted piety, of the most profound meditation, of that exquisite abstemiousness which dries up the mortal frame, is peculiar. Such a perfect soul becomes absorbed in the Divine essence, and is for ever exempt from transmigration. §

of future re

nishments of

We might very easily conclude, from the known laws of human nature, that The doctrine notwithstanding the language held by the Hindus on the connection between wards and pufuture happiness and the virtue of the present life, rewards and punishments, very no service to distant and very obscure, would be wholly impotent against temptations to morality. crime; though, at the instigation of the priests, they might engage the people in a ceaseless train of wretched ceremonies. The fact corresponds most exactly with the anticipation. An admirable witness has said, "The doctrine of a state of future rewards and punishments, as some persons may plead, has always been supposed to have a strong influence on public morals: the Hindoos not only have this doctrine in their writings, but are taught to consider every disease and misfortune of life as an undoubted symptom of moral disease, and the terrific appearance of its close-pursuing punishment. Can this fail to produce a dread

* Institutes of Menu, ch. xii. 24, 40 to 51. + Ib. 54 to 58.

Ib. 71, 72.

Ib. 125.

Book II. of vice, and a desire to merit the favour of the Deity? I will still farther," he adds, "assist the objector; and inform him, that the Hindoo writings declare, that till every immoral taint is removed, every sin atoned for, and the mind has obtained perfect abstraction from material objects, it is impossible to be re-united to the great spirit; and that, to obtain this perfection, the sinner must linger in many hells, and transmigrate through almost every form of matter." Our informant then declares; "Great as these terrors are, there is nothing more palpable than that, with most of the Hindoos, they do not weigh the weight of a feather, compared with the loss of a roopee. The reason is obvious: every Hindoo considers all his actions as the effect of his destiny; he laments, perhaps, his miserable fate, but he resigns himself to it without a struggle, like the malefactor in a condemned cell." This experienced observer adds, what is still more comprehensive, that the doctrine of future rewards and punishments has, in no situation, and among no people, a power to make men virtuous.*

*To this," he says, 66 may be added, what must have forced itself on the observation of every thoughtful observer, that, in the absence of the religious principle, no outward terrors, especially those which are invisible and future, not even bodily sufferings, are sufficient to make men virtuous. Painful experience proves, that even in a Christian country, if the religious principle does not exist, the excellence and the rewards of virtue, and the dishonour and misery attending vice, may be held up to men for ever, without making a single convert." Ward, "View, &c. of the Hindoos," Introd. p. lxxxiv. Here, however, Mr. Ward ought to have explained what he meant by the "religious principle," by which different persons mean very different things. This was the more necessary, that, having taken away all efficacy from the doctrine of future rewards and punishments, he strips religion of all power over the lives and actions of men, except in as far as good effects may be expected from the "religious principle," which, whatever else it may not be, is at any rate, in his estimation, not the expectation of future rewards and punishments.

CHAP. VII.

Manners.

By the manners of a nation are understood the peculiar modes in which the CHAP. VII. ordinary business of human life is performed. The business itself is every Definition of where essentially the same. In all nations men eat and drink; they meet, con- manners. verse, transact, and sport together. But the manner in which these and other things are performed is as different as the nations are numerous into which the human race is divided.

remonies, and

So much of the entire business of life, among the Hindus, consists in religious Religious ceservices, that the delineation of their religion, which we have now finished, af- the peculiarifords an illustration of the principal branch of their national manners.

ties of caste, two great

Hindu man

The singular distinctions, attached to the different classes, which we have branches of also previously described, is another remarkable feature in the manners of this ners. people. The lower orders, in other countries, are often lamentably debased; in Hindustan they are degraded infinitely below the brutes. With the single exception of the Vaisya caste, to whom is appropriated the business of agriculture and of barter, the whole of the productive classes of the community are accounted vile and odious, unworthy to eat, to drink, or to sit with a member of the classes above them.

pe

riods of life.

There are four remarkable divisions into which, with respect to the three The four honourable classes, human life is distributed. Of these periods; or orders, as they are denominated by the Hindus; the first is that of the student; the second, that of the householder; the third, that of the man who performs penance or other religious acts, residing continually in a forest; the fourth, that of the Sannyasi, or the ascetic absorbed in divine contemplation.*

The period of the student commences at the era of investiture. Prior to Period of the this age, the situation of children is remarkable; even those of a Brahmen are

not held superior in rank to a Sudra. closely resembles that of an European

The condition of the student much more
apprentice than that of a pupil in litera-

* See Laws of Menu, ch. ii., iii., and vi.
See the account of this era, p. 257 of this volume.

Institutes of Menu, ch. ii. 173.

student.

Book II. ture. He dwells in the house of his preceptor, and tends him with the most respectful assiduity. He is commanded to exert himself in all acts useful to his teacher; * and of course performs the part of an assistant in all the offices of religion.† "As he who digs deep with a spade comes to a spring of water, so the student, who humbly serves his teacher, attains the knowledge which lies deep in his teacher's mind." Upon the student of the priestly order a peculiar burden or distinction is imposed; which is, to acquire daily his food by begging. "The subsistence of a student by begging is held equal to fasting in religious merit." + キ

66

The gift of sacred instruction is not bestowed indiscriminately; but the text, which regulates the choice of pupils, is so vague as to leave the selection nearly at the discretion of the master. "Ten persons," it is declared, may legally be instructed in the Veda; the son of a spiritual teacher; a boy who is assiduous; one who can impart other knowledge; one who is just; one who is pure; one who is friendly; one who is powerful; one who can bestow wealth; one who is honest; and one who is related by blood. Where virtue and wealth are not found, or diligent attention proportioned, in that soil divine instruction must not be sown: it would perish like fine seed in barren land." §

"The venerable

The instruction which is bestowed may soon be described. preceptor, having girt his pupil with the thread, must first instruct him in purification, in good customs, in the management of the consecrated fire, and in the holy rites of morning, noon, and evening." The grand object of attention and || solicitude is the reading of the Veda.** This it is, which constitutes the education of the Hindu. We learn that to form and distinguish the letters of the Alphabet, by drawing them with a stick in the sand, and by consequence some knowledge of reading and writing, is pretty generally taught the children of the Hindus; some classes of the Brahmens have united with their religious doctrines certain speculations concerning the intellectual and material worlds; and these speculations have been dignified with the name of philosophy; but the holy rites, and the Veda, form the great, and on most occasions the exclusive object of that higher instruction which is bestowed on the pupil of the Brahmen,

*Institutes of Menu, ch. ii. 191.

"Let him carry water-pots, flowers, cow-dung, fresh earth, and cusa grass, as much as may be useful to his preceptor." Ibid. 182.

Ibid. 218. There are numerous precepts respecting the niceties of begging. Ibid. 48 to 50, and 183 to 190. ** Ibid. 70.

Institutes of Menu, ch. ii. 109, 112.

#Ibid. 69.