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 controversy; the highest become gandharvas (a species of supposed aerial spirits, whose business is music), genii attending superior gods, together with various companies of apsaras, or nymphs. Of the souls who are characterised by the quality of goodness, the lowest migrate into hermits, religious mendicants, other Brahmans, 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 intelligence; 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 Manu, “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 Brahman 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 Pucassa. He who steals the gold of a priest shall pass a thousand times into the bodies of spiders, of snakes, and chameleons, 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 Brahman omit his peculiar duty, he shall be changed into a demon, with a mouth like a firebrand, who devours what has been vomited; a Kshattriya, 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 forever exempt from transmigration.
We might very easily, from the known laws of human nature, conclude, notwithstanding the language held by the Hindus on the connection between future happiness and the virtue of the present life, that rewards and punishments, very distant and very obscure, would be wholly impotent against temptations to 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 Hindus 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 of vice, and a desire to merit the favour of the Deity? I will still further,” he adds, “assist the objector; and inform him that the Hindu 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 reunited 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 Hindus, they do not weigh the weight of a feather compared with the loss of a rupee. The reason is obvious: every Hindu considers all his action 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, which 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.[d]
Fate, as understood by the Hindus, is something very different from that of other people. It is necessity, as the consequence of past acts; that is, a man’s station and fortunes in his present life are the necessary consequences of his conduct in his pre-existence. To them he must submit, but not from despair. He has his future condition in his own power, and it depends upon himself in what capacity he shall be born again. He is not therefore the helpless victim of an irresistible and inscrutable destiny, but the sufferer for his own misdeeds, or the possessor of good which his own merits have secured him.[e]
BUDDHISM
When Buddhism was first made known to Europe, not so very many years ago, by means of translations of philosophic writings dated six centuries after Buddha, profound astonishment was felt at taking cognisance of the fact that a religion which had brought three hundred million souls under its law should acknowledge no god; should look upon the world as vain illusion, and should offer nothing but annihilation to the aspirations of man.
The examination of the bas-reliefs, with which the ancient monuments of India are covered, proves that the religion of Buddha, as practised by the Hindus during a period of one thousand years, differs completely from the representation of it given us by written documents. Not in books, in fact, but in a close study of the monuments themselves, can be learned what Buddhism was in former days; and the message these monuments deliver to us is a totally different one from that contained in books. The monuments reveal that this religion, which modern scientists have distorted into an atheistic belief, was, on the contrary, the most polytheistic of all religions.
It is true that in the first Buddhist monuments, eighteen to twenty centuries old, such as the balustrades of Bharhut, Sanchi, Buddha-Gaya, etc., the reformer figures solely as an emblem. Worship is accorded to the imprint of his feet, and to the image of the tree under which he entered the state of supreme wisdom; but we shortly begin to see Buddha represented as a god, having a place in all the sanctuaries. At first he is represented as alone, or nearly so, as in the most ancient temples of Ajunta; then gradually he appears in company with Brahman gods: Indra, Kali, Sarasvati, etc., as is to be seen in the Buddhist temples of the Ellora series of monuments. Completely lost a little later in the crowd of gods that he had at first dominated, he comes, after a few centuries, to be regarded as nothing more than an incarnation of Vishnu. From that day Buddhism has been extinct in India.
The disappearance, or rather the transformation which has just been indicated in a few lines, required a thousand years for its accomplishment. The numerous monuments which retrace its history were erected during the period extending from three centuries B.C. to the seventh of our era. During this long interval of time Buddha was constantly worshipped by his followers as an all-powerful god. Legends show him to us appearing before his disciples and according them favours. One of the men most deeply learned in Buddhist practices, the pilgrim, Hwen Tsang, who visited the peninsula in the seventh century and entered a long novitiate, relates having seen Buddha appear before him in a sacred grotto. Legends and monuments are perfectly clear in their teachings, and had the study of Buddhism been primarily based upon them, an entirely different impression of the religion would have gained ground from that which now prevails. Unfortunately, the European writers on India had never visited that country, gaining all their knowledge of Buddhism from books; and ill chance had directed them upon the works of certain philosophical sects, written five or six centuries after the death of Buddha, and containing little or nothing of the religion as actually practised.