The Religions of India eBook

Edward Washburn Hopkins
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 825 pages of information about The Religions of India.

The Religions of India eBook

Edward Washburn Hopkins
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 825 pages of information about The Religions of India.
is come to the sacrifice.  “Man is born into (whatever) world is made (by his acts in a previous existence),” is a short formula (Cat.  Br.. vi. 2. 2. 27), which represents the karma doctrine in its essential principle, though the ‘world’ is here not this world, but the next.  Compare Weber, ZDMG. ix. 237 ff.; Muir, OST. v. 314 ff.]

     [Footnote 57:  Though youth may be restored to him by the
     Acvins, Cat.  Br.. iv. i. 5. 1 ff.  Here the Horsemen are
     identified with Heaven and Earth (16).]

[Footnote 58:  Cal.  Br. ii. 3. 3. 7.  Apropos of the Brahmanic sun it may be mentioned that, according to Ait.  Br. iii. 44, the sun never really sets.  “People think that he sets, but in truth he only turns round after reaching the end of the day, and makes night below, day above; and when they think he rises in the morning, he having come to the end of the night, turns round, and makes day below, night above.  He never really sets.  Whoever knows this of him, that he never sets, obtains union and likeness of form with the sun, and the same abode as the sun’s.”  Compare Muir, OST. v. 521.  This may be the real reason why the Rig Veda speaks of a dark and light sun.]
[Footnote 59:  Cat.  Br.. i. 4. 3. 11-22 (’The sinner shall suffer and go quickly to yonder world’); xi. 6. 1 (compare Weber, loc. cit. p. 20 ff.; ZDMG. ix. 237), the Bhrigu story, of which a more modern form is found in the Upanishad period.  For the course of the sun, the fires on either side of the way, the departure to heaven ‘with the whole body,’ compare Cat.  Br. i. 9. 3. 2-15; iv. 5. 1. 1; vi. 6. 2. 4; xi. 2. 7. 33; Weber, loc. cit.:  Muir, loc. cit. v. p. 314.  Not to have all one’s bones in the next world is a disgrace, as Muir says, and for that reason they are collected at burial.  Compare the custom as described by the French missionaries here.  The American Indian has to have all his bones for future use, and the burying of the skeleton is an annual religious ceremony.]
[Footnote 60:  Compare RV. iv. 28. 4:  ’Thou Indra madest lowest the heathen.’  Weber has shown, loc. cit., that the general notion of the Br[=a]hmanas is that all are born again in the next world, where they are rewarded or punished according as they are good or bad; whereas in the Rig Veda the good rejoice in heaven, and the bad are annihilated.  This general view is to be modified, however, by such side-theories as those just mentioned, that the good (or wise) may be reborn on earth, or be united with gods, or become sunlight or stars (the latter are ‘watery’ to the Hindu, and this may explain the statement that the soul is ’in the midst of waters’).]
[Footnote 61:  There is in this age no notion of the repeated creations found in later literature.  On the contrary, it is expressly said in the Rig Veda, vi. 48. 22, that heaven and
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The Religions of India from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.