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them; which was, that I would issue an order that no ox or cow 

 might be killed in the city, nor the flesh publicly exposed to sale. 

 They said they knew the English soldiers would have beef where 

 it was procurable; but as those animals were esteemed sacred, 

 and none had ever been killed in Dhuboy during the Hindoo 

 government, nor had a Mahomedan ever dared to offer such an 

 offence, they hoped, if I could not entirely suppress the slaughter, 

 that I would keep the whole matter as private as possible during 

 the hours of darkness. It would have been cruel as well as im- 

 politic to have refused them so innocent and reasonable a request. 

 I only wished the rest of my countrymen there had been as indif- 

 ferent to this part of their food as myself, and their feelings should 

 not have been wounded. I made some fruitless attempts to reason 

 with the brahmins on the necessity of killing animals intended for 

 food ; they opposed the doctrine of the metempsychosis to all my 

 arguments, and would neither admit the truth nor beauty of Pope's 

 more rational system. 



" The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to day, 

 " Had he thy reason, would he skip and play? 

 " Pleas'd to the last, he crops the flowery food, 

 " And licks the hand just rais'd to shed his blood." 



According to Herodotus, the ancient Egyptians believed, that on 

 the dissolution of the body, the soul immediately entered into some 

 other animal, and that after using as vehicles every species of 

 terrestrial, aquatic, and winged creatures, it finally entered a second 

 time into the human body; and that it underwent all these changes 

 in the space of three thousand years. Very similar to these ideas, 



