I. In sketching the course of this thought among

the men of old, the first attention belongs to India. Brahmanism, the most primitive form of this faith, has gone through vast changes during the four thou- sand years of history. The initial form of it, dating back into the remotest mists of antiquity and descend- ing to the first chapters of authentic chronology, was an ideally simple nature-worship. The Rig- Veda and the oldest sacred hymns display the beauty of this ado- ration for every phase of nature, centering with espe- cial fondness upon light as the supreme power, and upon the cow as the favorite animal. Professor Wilson's
196 REINCARNATION AMONG THE ANCIENTS.
and Max M tiller's translations have opened to the English race the charming thought of this primordial people, whose great child-souls found objects of rever- ence in all things. There were no distinct gods, but everything was divine, and through all they saw the flow of ever-changing life. Gradually an ecclesiasti- cal system climbed up around this religion, clothing, stifling, and at last burying the vital organism, until Sakya Muni's reaction started Buddhism into vigorous growth as the beautiful protest against the disfigured and decayed form. About Buddhism, too, there has arisen a heavy weight of lifeless ritual, but every breath of life with which the slumbering mother and daughter continue their existence is perfumed with the rose- attar of reincarnation. How they have since contin- ued to disseminate the idea of reincarnation is sug- gested in chapter IX, for the East of to-day is essen- tially a sculptured picture of what has been monoto- nously enduring for twenty centuries.
Of the ancient Indians we learn through Pliny, Strabo, Megasthenes, Plutarch, and Herodotus, who describe the Gymnosophists and Brachmans as ascetic philosophers who made a study of spiritual things, liv- ing singly or in celibate communities much like the later Pythagoreans. Porphyry says of them : " They live without either clothes, riches or wives. They are held in so great veneration by the rest of their coun- trymen that the king himself often visits them to ask their advice. Such are their views of death that with reluctance they endure life as a piece of necessary bondage fco nature, and haste to set the soul at liberty from the body. Nay, often, when in good health, and no evil to disturb them, they depart life, advertising it beforehand. No man hinders them, but all reckon
REINCARNATION AMONG THE ANCIENTS. 197
them happy, and send commissions along with them to their dead friends. So strong and firm is their belief of a future life for the soul, where they shall enjoy one another, after receiving all their commands, they de- liver themselves to the fire, that they may separate the soul as pure as possible from the body, and expire singing hymns. Their old friends attend them to death with more ease than other men their fellow- citi- zens to a long journey. They deplore their own state for surviving them and deem them happy in their im- mortality." When Alexander the Great first pene- trated their country he could not persuade them to appear before him, and had to gratify his curiosity about their life and philosophy by proxy, though he afterward witnessed them surrender themselves to the flames.