Page:A Record of the Buddhist Religion as practised in India and the Malay Archipelago.djvu/72

 saw the yellow earth with the water ever moved by the wind, and the earth becoming more and more solid. The statements that the two principles, positive and negative, converted themselves into heaven and earth, and men came into being in the space between them ; that, influenced by impure and pure air, the dualisation of nature came into existence of its own accord ; and that the fashioning power of the two divisions of nature may be compared to the art of casting with its large furnace, and that the production of all things can be likened to the making of clay images ,—all these are only absurd statements resulting from narrow learning. Thereupon the mountains stood firm, the stars were scattered above, and the inanimate beings spread and multiplied. At last their views became different, and they were classed under ninety-six heads; the principles (tattva) were divided into twenty-five classes. The Sânkhya system of philosophy teaches that all things came into existence from One. But the Vaiseshika system declares that the five forms of existence arose from the six categories (padârtha). Some think it necessary, in order to get rid of rebirth, to have their body naked (Digambara) and the hair plucked out; others insist, as the means of securing heaven, on anointing their body with ashes or tying up their locks of hair. Some say life is self-existent, while others believe that the soul becomes extinct on death. There are many who think that existence is a perfect mystery, dark and obscure, and its reality is not to be explored, and it is too minute and complicated for us to know whence we have come into being.

Others say that man always regains human form by recurring births, or that after death men become spirits. 'I do not know,' one says ,