rallel elsewhere in the
literature or faith of the world. Brahmanism, with its hundred
million adherents holding sway over India, and Buddhism, with
its four hundred million disciples scattered over a dozen
nations, from Java to Japan, and from the Ceylonese to the
Samoyedes, practically considered, in reference to their actually
received dogmas and aims pertaining to a future life, agree
sufficiently to warrant us in giving them a general examination
together. The chief difference between them will be explained in
the sequel.

The most ancient Hindu doctrine of the future fate of man, as
given in the Vedas, was simple, rude, and very unlike the forms in
which it has since prevailed. Professor Wilson says, in the
introduction to his translation of the Rig Veda, that the
references to this subject in the primeval Sanscrit scriptures are
sparse and incomplete. But no one has so thoroughly elucidated
this obscure question as Roth of Tubingen, in his masterly paper
on the Morality of the Vedas, of which there is a translation, by
Professor Whitney, in the Journal of the American Oriental
Society.1 The results of his researches may be stated in few
words.

When a man dies, the earth is invoked to wrap his body up, as a
mother wraps her child in her garment, and to lie lightly on him.
He himself is addressed thus: "Go forth, go forth on the ancient
paths which our fathers in old times have trodden: the two rulers
in bliss, Yama and Varuna, shalt thou behold." Varuna judges all.
He thrusts the wicked down into darkness; and not a hint or clew
further of their doom is furnished. They were supposed either to
be annihilated, as Professor Roth thinks the Vedas imply, or else
to live as demons, in sin, blackness, and woe. The good go up to
heaven and are glorified with a shining spiritual body like that
of the gods. Yama, the first man, originator of the human race on
earth, is the beginner and head of renewed humanity in another
world, and is termed the Assembler of Men. It is a poetic and
grand conception that the first one who died, leading the way,
should be the patriarch and monarch of all who follow. The old
Vedic hymns imply that the departed good are in a state of exalted
felicity, but scarcely picture forth any particulars. The
following passage, versified with strict fidelity to the original,
is as full and explicit as any:

Where glory never fading is, where is the world of heavenly light,
The world of immortality