Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/270

 254 The Religion of the Veda

of that belief is not yet present. But the transition from one to the other was easy. If men can die in heaven there is no way, short of annihilation, to sew cure peace for anything that started out by being mortal. Next, the notion of “ redeath " in the inn». agined world beyond was after all too shadowy; it: lacked the practical data of experience. It was very natural to transplant the consequences of “ re-«death “ to this earth, the home and hearth of death where men, like ﬁsh, die at every wink of the eye. He who must die again comes on to do it on earth where the trick is so well understoodmlo and behold, we have the essential of mctcmpsychosis, namely a succession of lives and deaths in the career of one and the some being. I am far from believing that even such smooth reasoning, taken by itself, sufﬁces to account for the presence of this important doctrine in India, The germs of the belief in transmigration are very likely to have ﬁltered into the Brahmanical consciousness from below, from pepular sources, possibly from some of the aboriginal, non~Aryan tribes of India. Brahmanical religion has always borrowed immensely from folk beliefs and practices, and has always man~ aged to impart to these borrowings the look of integral Brahmanical doctrine.

Like a will-o’~the-wisp the belief in transmigration ‘

1 See Alfred Bertholet, Swimwendrmrzg (Nr. 2 of the iii. Series