SPIRIT - 1VORSHIP prevails throughout all the south-east of Asia, atnongst the Hindus, the Buddhists, the Chinese Taoista, and followers of Confucius, in Japan with the disciples of the Sintu faith, and in all these regiona among all the un cultivated aboriginal races. It is the one geneml cult of all these regions. When Thales tanght that the whole universe is pervaded by spirite, he was proclaiming both the primitive and the existing faith of all India and China. In India worship is performed to the Mute, N'etala, Pisachtt; Pt eta, Yaksha, Vidyadhara or sylphs, and in BUM:I to the Nat and to Rakshasa or demons.
Ancestor-vvorship is a recognition of the exist ence of spirits freed from the body. This faith was exhibited from early times by the Egyptians; it was as a faith deeply seated, also, in Greece and Rome ; it has aim ays been and still is the popular religion of the Chinese, and it forms the belief of all the aboriginal races, and of most of the Brahmanical Hindu religionists of India. The Egyptian belief in the transmigration of the human soul into other bodies, and into the bodies of animals, was connected with it. .Animal worship dates from the earliest times in Egypt. and soon after the time of Menes (p.c. 3100) it became the established religion; throughout the empire. This form of faith had evidently its origin in their belief in the identity of the principle of life in all living beings, and in the identity of the soul with life ; grounded on a consciousness of moral responsibility and a belief in the personal indestructibility of the human soul. They believed that at the point of death. the deeda of this life are examined, judged, and rewarded or punished; in the latter case condemned to be degraded from human to aniinal life, and one regueated by brutal instincts.
In China, the spirits of deceased ancestors are periodically worshipped, and on weighty occasions are consulted. In their marriage processions, the titles of the ancestors ftre carried along with other displayed articles, and they are invoked to bless a newly-wedded couple. Their tombs are kept in repair. Spirits are summoned to attend to their worshippers. Acconiing to the Brahinanical IIindus, two things are indispensably necessary to the sacrificer in performing a religious ceretnony,—seveml lighted lamps, ancl a bell, and the bell is sounded when the deity or spirit ia supposed to be summoned.
The Kyoung-tha of Chittagong are Buddhists. Their village temples contain a small stand of bells, and an image of Buddha, which the villagers generally worship morning and evening, first ringing the bells, to let hitn know that they are there. The Sintu temples of the sun goddess in Japan also contain a bell, intended to arouse the goddess, and to awaken her attention to the prayers of her worshippers.
Among the Tiperah of Chittagong, if a man die away from home, his relatives stretch a thread over all the intermediate streams, so that the spirit of the dead man may return to his own village; it being supposed that without assistance spirits are unable to cross running water, as Burns in his Tam-o-Shanter says, a running stream they daurna cross; ' the streams are therefore bridged. A somewhat similar idea mdsted in Europe, and it occurs also in the Fiji • Islands, and among the Kol of Nagpur. All diseases in men and in cattle are attributed to one or two causes,—the wrath of some evil spirit who has to be appeased, or the spell of some witch or sorcerer. The Cire,assians and some of the Chinese have also the same belief. Hence it is that insane people are in many countries regarded with so much reverence, since they are looked on as the special abode of some deity.
Hindus, in the Srad heceremonial, make offer ings to the spirits of their ancestors. After death, the spirit of the Hindu is conveyed by the messenger of Yama, through the air, to the place of judgment. After receiving sentence, it wanders about the earth for twelve months, as an aerial being or ghost, and then takes a body suited to its future condition, whether it ascend to the gods, or suffer in a new body, or be hurled into some hell. This is the doctrine of several Puranas; others maintain that im mediately after de,ath and judgment, the person suffers the pains of hell, and removes his siu by sufferimr, and then returns to the earth in some bodily form.