This state of existence has been generally translated annihilation, and, as Crawfurd observes,[95] this misconception has thrown “an unmerited share of obloquy on the worship of Budd’ha.” Dr. Buchanan remarks, that the term is very inaccurately translated;[96] and Colebrooke was the first to give a correct definition of it, in an essay on the Philosophy of Indian Sectaries.[97] Sangermano’s definition I subjoin:—“This consists in an almost perpetual ecstasy, in which those who attain it are not only free from the troubles and miseries of life, from death, illness, and old age, but are abstracted from all sensation; they have no longer a thought or desire.”[98]
Human life is continually on the decrease or the increase. At first men attained to an age which can only be conceived by this calculation. “It is said, that if it should rain continually for the space of three years over the whole world, which is 1,203,430 juzenà in diameter, the number of drops of rain fallen in this time would express the number of years that compose an assenchiè,”[99] the term implying the whole period. But the wickedness of man caused his life to be more and more limited, and it reached at length to ten years only. From that time it increased, on their becoming more virtuous, and again they lived an assenchiè. This increase and decrease is to be fulfilled sixty-four times before the destruction of the world. This variation is however limited to the inhabitants of Zabudiba. Space will not permit me to give the description I would of the northern island, where the Burman Utopia is placed. The philosophical inquirer will find it in Sangermano and Buchanan.
The Nats, or genii, have their various seats in the intermediate space between Mienmò and the confines of the world, and live in different degrees of happiness and power. These abodes of the Nats are represented as very delightful, and it is thither that the devout Buddhist hopes to come. The four conditions of punishment are, degradation into beasts; Preitta, a state of sorrow resembling the Tartarus of the Hellenes; the Assurichè, almost identical with Preitta; and Niria, the actual hell of the Burmese.
The transformation into beasts is reserved for those who do not keep a sufficient restraint over themselves, and who speak in a heedless and evil manner. Those who neglect to give alms, too, pass into this condition. An elephant lives sixty years, a horse thirty, an ox and a dog, ten, and upon this they base their calculations.[100]
In the second state of punishment, Preitta, the condemned are obliged to live upon disgusting filth, and inhabit sewers, cisterns, and tombs. Some wander naked through gloomy forests, making them re-echo with their lamentations, exposed to storms, and fainting with hunger and thirst. Some plough the ground with a plough of fire; others feed on their own flesh and blood, and tear themselves with hooks; and some are tormented by fire. Misers, uncharitable persons, persons who give alms to the wrong Rahaans or priests, are condemned to Preitta.
Assurichè is very like Preitta in its punishments, only every torment is here more acute and frightful. Quarrelsome persons, strikers with weapons, advancers and abettors of bad men, are sent thither.
In the fourth hell, Niria, the sufferings are by fire and cold. It is situated in the midst of the great stone Silapatavi, and is divided into many hells. Here the worst of mankind are punished, and here sit the judges, selected from the dead, upon their peculiar expiation. The time of confinement in all these places is undecided, and very few, if any, are sentenced to eternal punishment. By good behaviour in all these places the sufferers may attain to the position of insects, and gradually rise through all gradations, and finally attain Nieban.[101] The crimes and their punishments are very whimsical, and some very horrid. They are given at length in Sangermano. However, a spirit of mercy runs through all their dogmas, and, as already observed, every one may regain his lost position, though it is this southern island that is the most favoured; for here only can the believer attain Nieban. The infidels only are condemned to eternal torment.
I may conclude this account of the Burman cosmography with a few lines of the oldest writer on Hellenic philosophy, in which a very tolerable description of the nature of the Nat is given.
When in the dark and dread abodes of earth,
The men of earliest golden age were laid,