Part 12 (1/2)

Their costume is a robe with a belt of four knots, and a veil over their mouth for fear of polluting the fire with their breath.

*** The Zoroastrians are divided between two opinions; one party believing that both soul and body will rise, the other that it will be the soul only. The Christians and Mahometans have embraced the most solid of the two.

Next to these, remark those banners of an azure ground, painted with monstrous figures of human bodies, double, triple, and quadruple, with heads of lions, boars, and elephants, and tails of fishes and tortoises; these are the ensigns of the sects of India, who find their G.o.ds in various animals, and the souls of their fathers in reptiles and insects.

These men support hospitals for hawks, serpents, and rats, and they abhor their fellow creatures! They purify themselves with the dung and urine of cows, and think themselves defiled by the touch of a man! They wear a net over the mouth, lest, in a fly, they should swallow a soul in a state of penance,* and they can see a Pariah** perish with hunger!

They acknowledge the same G.o.ds, but they separate into hostile bands.

* According to the system of the Metempsychosis, a soul, to undergo purification, pa.s.ses into the body of some insect or animal. It is of importance not to disturb this penance, as the work must in that case begin afresh.

** This is the name of a cast or tribe reputed unclean, because they eat of what has enjoyed life.

The first standard, retired from the rest, bearing a figure with four heads, is that of Brama, who, though the creator of the universe, is without temples or followers; but, reduced to serve as a pedestal to the Lingam,* he contents himself with a little water which the Bramin throws every morning on his shoulder, reciting meanwhile an idle canticle in his praise.

* See Sonnerat, Voyage aux Indes, vol. 1.

The second, bearing a kite with a scarlet body and a white head, is that of Vichenou, who, though preserver of the world, has pa.s.sed part of his life in wicked actions. You sometimes see him under the hideous form of a boar or a lion, tearing human entrails, or under that of a horse,*

shortly to come armed with a sword to destroy the human race, blot out the stars, annihilate the planets, shake the earth, and force the great serpent to vomit a fire which shall consume the spheres.

* These are the incarnations of Vichenou, or metamorphoses of the sun. He is to come at the end of the world, that is, at the expiration of the great period, in the form of a horse, like the four horses of the Apocalypse.

The third is that of Chiven, G.o.d of destruction and desolation, who has, however, for his emblem the symbol of generation. He is the most wicked of the three, and he has the most followers. These men, proud of his character, express in their devotions to him their contempt for the other G.o.ds,* his equals and brothers; and, in imitation of his inconsistencies, while they profess great modesty and chast.i.ty, they publicly crown with flowers, and sprinkle with milk and honey, the obscene image of the Lingam.

* When a sectary of Chiven hears the name of Vichenou p.r.o.nounced, he stops his ears, runs, and purifies himself.

In the rear of these, approach the smaller standards of a mult.i.tude of G.o.ds--male, female, and hermaphrodite. These are friends and relations of the princ.i.p.al G.o.ds, who have pa.s.sed their lives in wars among themselves, and their followers imitate them. These G.o.ds have need of nothing, and they are constantly receiving presents; they are omnipotent and omnipresent, and a priest, by muttering a few words, shuts them up in an idol or a pitcher, to sell their favors for his own benefit.

Beyond these, that cloud of standards, which, on a yellow ground, common to them all, bear various emblems, are those of the same G.o.d, who reins under different names in the nations of the East. The Chinese adores him in Fot,* the j.a.panese in Budso, the Ceylonese in Bedhou, the people of Laos in Chekia, of Pegu in Phta, of Siam in Sommona-Kodom, of Thibet in Budd and in La. Agreeing in some points of his history, they all celebrate his life of penitence, his mortifications, his fastings, his functions of mediator and expiator, the enmity between him and another G.o.d, his adversary, their battles, and his ascendency. But as they disagree on the means of pleasing him, they dispute about rites and ceremonies, and about the dogmas of interior doctrine and of public doctrine. That j.a.panese Bonze, with a yellow robe and naked head, preaches the eternity of souls, and their successive transmigrations into various bodies; near him, the Sintoist denies that souls can exist separate from the senses,** and maintains that they are only the effect of the organs to which they belong, and with which they must perish, as the sound of the flute perishes with the flute. Near him, the Siamese, with his eyebrows shaved, and a talipat screen*** in his hand, recommends alms, offerings, and expiations, at the same time that he preaches blind necessity and inexorable fate. The Chinese vo-chung sacrifices to the souls of his ancestors; and next him, the follower of Confucius interrogates his destiny in the cast of dice and the movement of the stars.**** That child, surrounded by a swarm of priests in yellow robes and hats, is the Grand Lama, in whom the G.o.d of Thibet has just become incarnate.*5 But a rival has arisen who partakes this benefit with him; and the Kalmouc on the banks of the Baikal, has a G.o.d similar to the inhabitant of Lasa. And they agree, also, in one important point--that G.o.d can inhabit only a human body. They both laugh at the stupidity of the Indian who pays homage to cow-dung, though they themselves consecrate the excrements of their high-priest.*6

* The original name of this G.o.d is Baits, which in Hebrew signifies an egg. The Arabs p.r.o.nounce it Baidh, giving to the dh an emphatic sound which makes it approach to dz.

Kempfer, an acurate traveler, writes it Budso, which must be p.r.o.nounced Boudso, whence is derived the name of Budsoist and of Bonze, applied to the priests. Clement of Alexandria, in his Stromata, writes it Bedou, as it is p.r.o.nounced also by the Chingulais; and Saint Jerome, Boudda and Boutta. At Thibet they call it Budd; and hence the name of the country called Boud-tan and Ti-budd: it was in this province that this system of religion was first inculcated in Upper Asia; La is a corruption of Allah, the name of G.o.d in the Syriac language, from which many of the eastern dialects appear to be derived. The Chinese having neither b nor d, have supplied their place by f and t, and have therefore said Fout.

** See in Kempfer the doctrine of the Sintoists, which is a mixture of that of Epicurus and of the Stoics.

*** It is a leaf of the Latanier species of the palm-tree.

Hence the bonzes of Siam take the appellation of Talapoin.

The use of this screen is an exclusive privilege.

**** The sectaries of Confucius are no less addicted to astrology than the bonzes. It is indeed the malady of every eastern nation.

*5 The Delai-La-Ma, or immense high priest of La, is the same person whom we find mentioned in our old books of travels, by the name of Prester John, from a corruption of the Persian word Djehan, which signifies the world, to which has been prefixed the French word prestre or pretre, priest.

Thus the priest world, and the G.o.d world are in the Persian idiom the same.

*6 In a recent expedition the English have found certain idols of the Lamas filled in the inside with sacred pastils from the close stool of the high priest. Mr. Hastings, and Colonel Pollier, who is now at Lausanne, are living witnesses of this fact, and undoubtedly worthy of credit.

It will be very extraordinary to observe, that this disgusting ceremony is connected with a profound philosophical system, to wit, that of the metempsychosis, admitted by the Lamas. When the Tartars swallow, the sacred relics, which they are accustomed to do, they imitate the laws of the universe, the parts of which are incessantly absorbed and pa.s.s into the substance of each other. It is upon the model of the serpent who devours his tail, and this serpent is Budd and the world.