238 
SCENES IN INDIA. 
loathsome to the sight of man, only to he rewarded 
with a more transcendant form when the period of 
expiation should terminate. Others went so far as to 
look upon him as an Avatar of Vishnoo, surmising 
that he had descended from the world of glory in 
such a homely vesture of mortal flesh to teach hu- 
mility to mankind. The prevailing opinion certainly 
seemed to he that his distorted frame was the abode 
of a soul which had formerly inhabited another body., 
and was undergoing a state of purgation prepara- 
tory to its entrance into the blissful abodes of pa- 
radise ; so that he was universally treated with 
kindness, as much from sympathy and superstitious 
reverence, nay probably more so, than from any disin- 
terested feeling of compassion for his miserable state. 
The doctrine of the metempsychosis, or transmigration 
of souls, is very sublimely supported in the Bhagvat 
Geeta, from which I give an extract. “ The soul is 
not a thing of which a man may say, it hath been, it 
is about to be, or is to be hereafter; for it is a thing 
without birth ; it is ancient, constant, and eternal, 
and is not to be destroyed in this its mortal frame. 
How can a man who belie veth that this thing is in- 
corruptible, eternal, inexhaustible, and without birth, 
think that he can either kill or cause it to be killed ! 
As a man throweth away old garments and putteth on 
new, even so the soul, having quitted its old mortal 
frames, entereth into others which are new. The 
weapon divideth it not, the fire bumeth it not, the 
water corrupteth it not, the wind drieth it not away ; 
■ — for it is indivisible, inconsumable, incorruptible, 
and is not to be dried away ; — it is eternal, universal, 
