Page:A Comprehensive History of India Vol 2.djvu/95

59 Chap. II.] CREED OF THE HINDOOS. 59

original dignity and desirous of regaining it, is a haven of purity and felicity, a.d. — where it may rest secure after all the toils and trials of the present life are ended ; whereas Hindooism only offers a repetition of the same toils and trials under a new form — a repetition which indeed has some imaginary limits assigned to it, but those so remote, that it may after the lapse of ages give no signs of drawing to a close.

A less unfavourable view of the dogma of transmigration is sometimes taken, Tme nature and it ha.s been said that by it " hope seems denied to none ; the most wicked giatiou. man, after being purged of his crimes by ages of suffering and repeated trans- migrations, may ascend in the scale of being, until he may enter into heaven, and even attain the highest reward of all the good, which is incorporation in the essence of God."^ Such a result being certainly possible, it may be worth while to trace the steps of the process by which it is to be obtained. In the twelfth chap- ter of the Institutes of Menu, which treats at length of transmigration and final beatitude, the explanation of the dogma is as follows: — "A rational creature has a reward or a punishment for mental acts in his mind ; for verbal acts in his organs of speech ; for corporeal acts in his bodily frame. For sinful acts corporeal, a man shall assume a vegetable or mineral form ; for such acts verbal, the form of a bird or a beast ; for acts mental, the lowest of human conditions." Again: "Be it known, that the three qualities of the rational soul are a tendency to goodness, to passion, and to darkness; and endued with one or more of them, it remains incessantly attached to all these created substances." "When a man perceives in the reasonable soul a disposition tending to virtuous Mode in

' _ which its

love, unclouded with any malignant passion, clear as the purest light, let him changes are recognize it as the quality of goodness ; a temper of mind which gives uneasi- °. ness, and produces disaffection, let him consider as the adverse quality of passion, ever agitating embodied spirits; that indistinct, inconceivable, unaccountable disposition of a mind naturally sensual and clouded with infatuation, let him know to be the quality of darkness." Each of these three qualities or dispositions of mind admits of three degrees — a highest, a middle, and a lowest. The corre- sponding transmigrations are thus described: — 1. "Vegetable and mineral sub- stances, worms, insects and reptiles, fish, snakes, tortoises, cattle, shakals, are the lowest forms to which the dark quality leads ; elephants, horses, men of the servile class, and contemptible MlecJihas (barbarians), lions, tigers, and boars, are the mean states procured by the quality of darkness ; dancers and singers, Quauties of

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birds, and deceitful men, giants and blood-thirsty savages, are the highest con- ana passion ditions to which the dark quality can ascend." 2. " Jhallas or cudgel-players, mallas or boxers and wrestlers, natas or actors, those who teach the use of weapons, and those who are addicted to gaming and drinking, are the lowest forms occasioned by the passionate quality ; kings, men of the fighting class, domestic priests of kings, and men skilled in the war of controversy, are the

' Elphinatone's History of India, vol. i. pages 189, 190.