Page:History of India Vol 9.djvu/198

 160 THE ARAB AL-BIRUNI ON HINDU RELIGION qualities of bodies do not apply to him. Now some uneducated man reads this and imagines that God is as small as a point, and he does not find out what the word " point " in this sentence was really intended to express. He will not even stop with this offensive com- parison, but will describe God as much larger, and will say, " He is twelve fingers long and ten fingers broad." Further, if an uneducated man hears what we have mentioned, that God comprehends the universe so that nothing is concealed from him, he will at once imagine that this comprehending is effected by means of eyesight; that eyesight is only possible by means of an eye, and that two eyes are better than only one; and in consequence he will describe God as having a thousand eyes, meaning to describe his omniscience. Similar hideous fictions are sometimes met with among the Hindus, especially among those castes who are not allowed to occupy themselves with science, of whom we shall speak hereafter. As the word of confession, " There is no god but God, Mohammed is his prophet," is the shibboleth of Islam, the Trinity that of Christianity, and the insti- tution of the Sabbath that of Judaism, so metempsy- chosis is the shibboleth of the Hindu religion. There- fore he who does not believe in it does not belong to them, and is not reckoned as one of them. For they hold that the soul, as long as it has not risen to the highest absolute intelligence, does not comprehend the totality of objects at once. Therefore it must explore all particular beings and examine all the possibilities