Since there can be no proof of the soul's migrations, the detail in which these are described in the religious works of the Hindus, is merely fantastical, and interesting only so far as it affords a kind of standard by which, at various epochs. and by different writers, the moral merit or demerit of human actions was measured in India. Thus, Manu (in the 12th book of his code of laws) teaches; " The slayer of a ing to the degree of his guilt—is reborn as a dog, a boar, an ass. a camel, a bull, a goat, a sheep, a stag, a bird, a Cha'n'dala, or Pukkas'a. A Brahman'a, who chinks spiritu ous liquor, will migrate into the bodies of a worm, an insect, a grasshopper, a fly feed ing on ordure, or some mischievous animal. A twice-born who steals (the gold of a Braman'a), will pass a thousand times into the bodies of spiders, snakes, and chame leons, of aquatic monsters, or of murderous bloodthirsty demons. He who violates the bed of his guru, will a hundred times migrate into the forms of grasses, of shrubs, and of creeping plants,. of carnivorous animals and beasts with long teeth, or of cruel brutes. Those who inflict injury (on sentient beings), become flesh-eaters; and those who eat forbidden things, worms. Thieves become devourers of each other; and those who embrace women of the lowest castes, become ghosts. . . . If a man, through covetous ness, has stolen gems, pearl, or coral, or whatever belongs to the precious substances, he is reborn in the tribe of goldsmiths; if he has stolen grain, he becomes a rat; if kansya (a composition of zinc and copper), a Itansa bird; if water, a diver; if honey, a gadfly; if milk, a crow; if juice (of the sugar-cane or the like), a dog; if clarified butter, an ichneumon; if flesh, a vulture; if fat, a shag; if oil, a cockroach; if salt, a cricket; if curds, the crane, called valilka;" etc. A more general doctrine of the migration of souls is based by Hindu philosophers on the assumption of the three cosmic qualities of wawa, i.e., purity or goodness; rajas, i.e., troubledness or passion; and tamas, i.e., darkness or sin, with which the human soul may become endued. And on this doctrine, .again, Mann and other writers build an elaborate theory of the various births to which the soul may become subject. Menu, for instance, teaches that "souls endued with the quality of settee attain the condition of deities: those having the quality of rajas, the condition of men; and those having the quality of tames, the condition of beasts." Each of these conditions, he continues, is, according to the acts knowledge of the soul, threefold; the lowest, the middle, and the highest. The lowest embodiment of the quality tames is inanimate objects, worms, insects, fish, serpents, tortoises, tame and wild beasts; the middle state, to which the same quality leads, is (the state of) an -elephant, a horse, a s'fldra, a mlechchha or barbarian, a lion, a tiger, and a boar; the Highest, that of a public performer, a bird, a cheat, a demon - called rakshas, and a The lowest condition to which the soul imbued with the quality rajas arrives is that of a cudgel-player, a boxer, a public dancer, a man who lives on the use of weapons, and one addicted to gambling and drinking; the middle condition, that of a king, a nine of the kshattriya or military caste, a house-priest of a king, and a man fond of learned controversy; the highest, that of a gaudharva or musician in Indra's heaven, a zuhyaka or yaksha (Lwo kinds of attendants on the god of riches) or another attendant on another god, or an apsaras or heavenly nymph in Indra's heaven. The lowest state procured by the quality of sathea is that of a vanaprastha—or a hermit of the third order of life—a religious mendicant, a Brahman'a, or one of the demigods traveling about in palace-like cars, one of (the genii presiding over) the lunar mansions, or an offspring of Diti The middle state, procured by the same quality, is that of a sacrificer, a rishi (q.v.), a god of the lower heaven (a deny personating one of the) Vedas (a deity presiding over one of) luminaries or years, one of the manes or progenitors of mankind, and of the demigods called Sadhya. The highest condition to which the quelity of gattiva leads is that of the god Brahmil. that of a creator of the world (as iforichi, or another patriarch of the same rank), thrt of the genius of Dharma (virtue or right), of Jorokat, or the iutellectua; principle of creation, and of Prakr'iti, or matter." See SANKEYA.
It is not necessary here to slie•' that this detail regarding the migrations of the souls is more or less differently given by other authors at other periods of Hindu religion, according to the views which they entertained of right and wrong, of the value and rank of imaginary or created beings, and of the social conditions of men. For, since all orthodox Hindu writers agree in principle with Minn, the quotations alleged from his work suffice to illustrate the imaginary positiveness with which the doctrine of transmi gration was propounded. and to establish the conclusion that this doctrine rested in India on ethical grounds.
It has been already pointed out that the belief in the soul's life after the death of the body must precede the doctrine of transmigration. As such a belief, however, may be traced in some hymns of the Itigreda (see VEDA), it has been supposed that this doc trine, too, is as old as this Veda. But apart from the uncertainty which still exists retarding not only the ace, but even the relative age at which the different hymns of the robe were composed, and setting aside the fallacy which therefore attaches to speaking of this Veda as a contemporaneous whole, it is necessary to observe that the only passage which has been adduced in proof of this important discovery does not bear it out. It is the 32d verse of the hymn i. 164, and, according to the translation of prof. 'Wilson (vol. ii. pp. 137, 138), runs as follows: "He who has made (this state of things) does not comprehend it; he who has hcheld it, has it also verily hidden (from him); he while yet enveloped in his mother's womb, is subject to ma ny births, and has entered upon evil." Bid the word of the text, babuprajeih', rendered by Wilson, according to the commentator, "is subject to many births," may, according to the same commentator, also mean, "has many offsprings." or "has many children ;" and as the latter sense is the more literal and usual sense of the word, whereas the former is artificial, no conclu sion whatever regarding the doctrine of trausmigration can safely be founded on it.
The Buddhistic belief in transmigration is derived from that of the Brahmanic Hin dus; it agrees with the latter in principle, though it differs from it in the imaginary detail in which it was worked out, Like the Brahmanic Hindus, the Buddhists believe that all souls have existed from the beginning; like them, they believe in the unreality and sinfulness of the world, in the necessity of the soul's freeing itself from the bondage of this world, and in the casual connection between the actions of man in this, and his condition in a subsequent. life. Like the Brahmanic Hindus, they hold, therefore, that sin is the cause of transmigra tion, and that, by a total expiation of sin, the soul ceases to he reborn, and attains its final resting-place. But since this resting place is to the Buddhists Nirvilna (q.v.), or non entity, whereas to Brahmanism it is Brahman, or the principle of entity; since reject the institution of caste, which is the social foundation of Brahmanic; life: since they do not acknowledge the authority of the Vedas, and the codes based on it, and therefore consider as morally wrong much that the Bnihmanic 'Sastras enjoin as morally right, the standard according to which the life of a Buddhist is regulated rot••t diffcr in many respects front that which governs the conduct of a Brahmanic Hindu; and his ideas of reward and punishment, therefore, as reflected by his ideas of the node of transmigration. likewise differ from those of the Brahmanic believer. enlarge here on this difference is not necessary, for, after the illustrations already afforded from Mann, it is easy to conceive that the detail of the Buddhistic doctrine of transmigration is as fanciful as that of the Brahmanic doctrine; that it is therefore partly devoid of in terest, and partly intelligible only if taken in connection with the detail of Buddhistic religion and literature (see BUDDHISM; also LA3IAI8M). Yet it is not superfluous to point out one great difference which separates the notions of one class of Buddhists from those of the rest, as well as from those of the Brahmanic Hindus. According to the latter, and the great mass of Buddhists, it is always the same soul which ever from its first birth reappears in its subsequent births, until it is finally liberated from transmigra tion. But among the southern Buddhists, another idea has also taken root. In their belief, the succession of existences of a being is also a succession of souls; and each such soul, though the result of its predecessor, is not identical with it. According to this view, the body dies, and with it the soul, too, is "extinguished," leaving behind only the good and bad acts which it has performed during its life. The result of these acts now becomes the seed of a new life, and the soul of this new life is therefore the neces sary product of the soul of the former life. Thus all the succeeding souls have to labor at the solution of the same problem, which began when their first ancestor entered this world, but no succeeding birth is animated by the same soul. This dogma is illustrated iu their works by various similes. One lamp, they say, for instance, is kindled at an other; the light of the former is not identical with that of the latter, but nevertheless without this the other light could not have originated. Or, a tree produces fruit; from the fruit another tree arises, and so on; the last tree is therefore not the same as the first, though the fruit is the necessary cause of the last.