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SCENES IN INDIA. 
destroy the purity of the primitive worship. The 
doctrine of the metempsychosis is one to which I be- 
lieve the different Hindoo sects unanimously subscribe. 
They hold that immediately after death the soul is 
wafted into the presence of its eternal judge, who 
passes sentence upon it, condemning it to everlasting 
happiness or misery according to its spiritual purity 
or pollution upon earth. If it be condemned to suffer, 
after an expiation of ages it returns to the world it 
has quitted and assumes a bestial incarnation. Dur- 
ing a succession of lives it takes possession of the 
bodies of several beasts of progressively higher grades, 
and thus gradually advances in the scale of animal 
improvement. When the process of personal atone- 
ment has been so far completed, it passes into the 
frame of a man, still migrating from one human 
body to another more holy and increasing in spiritual 
purity until the crimes committed in a former state 
of existence have been sufficiently expiated, when it is 
released from its hard bondage of probation, received 
into the celestial paradise and absorbed into the Deity. 
Before we left Gyah we went into the woods with 
our guns in search of game, a pastime so common in 
India, that the traveller scarcely passes a day on his 
journey without enjoying it. On the present occasion 
a large hog was shot, but did not yield without 
making a fierce resistance; not until it had re- 
ceived fourteen balls in its body from different guns, 
did it finally relinquish the hard struggle for life. 
We left the carcass close by the edge of a jungle, in- 
tending on our return to deprive it of its head, and bear 
this to our tents as a trophy. We continued our sport 
