These are the principal articles of the Brahmin faith, which has endured without intermission from time immemorial to the present day.
This is but a small part of the ancient cosmogony of the Brahmins. Their rites, their pagods, prove that among them all was allegorical. They still represent Virtue in the form of a woman with ten arms, combating ten mortal sins typified by monsters. Our missionaries were acute enough to take this image of Virtue for that of the devil, and affirm that the devil is worshipped in India. We have never visited that people but to enrich ourselves and calumniate them.
The Metempsychosis of the Brahmins.
The doctrine of the metempsychosis comes from an ancient law of feeding on cow's milk as well as on vegetables, fruits, and rice. It seemed horrible to the Brahmins to kill and eat their feeder; and they had soon the same respect for goats, sheep, and all other animals: they believed them to be animated by the rebellious angels, who were completing their purification in the bodies of beasts as well as in those of men. The nature of the climate seconded, or rather originated this law. A burning atmosphere creates a necessity for refreshing food, and inspires horror for our custom of stowing carcasses in our stomachs.
The opinion that beasts have souls was general throughout the East, and we find vestiges of it in the ancient sacred writings. In the book of Genesis, God forbids men to eat "their flesh with their blood and their soul." Such is the import of the Hebrew text. "I will avenge," says he, "the blood of your souls on the claws of beasts and the hands of men." In Leviticus he says, "The soul of the flesh is in the blood." He does more; he makes a solemn compact with man and with all animals, which supposes an intelligence in the latter.
In much later times, Ecclesiasticus formally says, "God shows that man is like to the beasts; for men die like beasts; their condition is equal; as man dies, so also dies the beast. They breathe alike. There is nothing in man more than in the beast." Jonah, when he went to preach at Nineveh, made both men and beasts fast.
All ancient authors, sacred books as well as profane, attribute knowledge to the beasts; and several make them speak. It is not then to be wondered at that the Brahmins, and after them the Pythagoreans, believed that souls passed successively into the bodies of beasts and of men; consequently they persuaded themselves, or at least they said, that the souls of the guilty angels, in order to finish their purgation, belonged sometimes to beasts, sometimes to men. This is a part of the romance of the Jesuit Bougeant, who imagined that the devils are spirits sent into the bodies of animals. Thus, in our day, and at the extremity of the west, a Jesuit unconsciously revives an article of the faith of the most ancient Oriental priests.
The Self-burning of Men and Women among the Brahmins.
The Brahmins of the present day, who do all that the ancient Brahmins did, have, we know, retained this horrible custom. Whence is it that, among a people who have never shed the blood of men or of animals, the finest act of devotion is a public self-burning? Superstition, the great uniter of contraries, is the only source of these frightful sacrifices, the custom of which is much more ancient than the laws of any known people.
The Brahmins assert that their great prophet Brahma, the son of God, descended among men, and had seyeral wives; and that after his death, the wife who loved him the most burned herself on his funeral pile, that she might join him in heaven. Did this woman really burn herself, as it is said that Portia, the wife of Brutus, swallowed burning coals, in order to be reunited to her husband? or is this a fable invented by the priests? Was there a Brahma, who really gave himself out as a prophet and son of God? It is likely that there was a Brahma, as there afterwards were a Zoroaster and a Bacchus. Fable seized upon their history, as she has everywhere constantly done.