lists (Enneads) is instructive, as showing the different estimation in which certain occupations were held in India and in Greece. In India the nine steps of the ladder of existences rise from the lowest animals to the world of human beings in their various occupations, then to the demons, to the Vedas, the heavenly lights, the years, the Fathers, and the gods, in their various spheres of action, and lastly to the creator of the world and to Brahman himself. In this we are often reminded not only of the nine classes of Plato, but likewise of the nine stages of the so-called heavenly Hierarchy, as we find them in Proclus, and in Dionysius the Areopagite. There also, the number is nine, nay the three triads are here, exactly as in India, subdivided each into three stages, and room is made as in India, not only for animate beings, whether men or angels, but likewise for inanimate, such as Thrones, Powers, and Dominions. Whether these coincidences are too great to be accepted as mere fortuitous coincidences, we shall be better able to judge when we come to consider the writings of Dionysius the Areopagite, and their extraordinary influence both on the scholastic and the mystic, that is, the psychological theology of the Middle Ages. Punishments of the Wicked. Another important feature which marks the later date of Manu's Laws is his acquaintance not only with metempsychosis, but with punishments inflicted on the wicked in places which we must call hells-for hells are a late invention in most religions. Thus we read (XII. 54), Those who have committed mortal sins (mahâpâtakas) having passed 6 through a large number of years through dreadful hells, obtain after the expiration of that term of punishment, the following births: 'The slayer of a Brâhmana enters the womb of a dog, a pig, a camel, a cow, a goat, a sheep, a deer, a bird, a Kandâla, and a Pukkasa.' Here we have clearly the idea of punishment in hell, apart from the punishment entailed by simply being born again as a low animal. And what is curious is that Yama, who at first was only conceived as the ruler among the departed, as a kind deity with whom the Pitris enjoyed themselves, is now mentioned as inflicting torments on the wicked (XII. 17), a part which he continues to act in the later literature of India. In the hymns of the Rig-veda we find very little that could be compared to the later ideas of hell. Nor is there any reason to suppose, as both Roth and Weber seem to do, that the Vedic Indians had realised the idea of annihilation, and that they believed annihilation to be the proper punishment of the wicked. As they spoke of the abode of the blessed in very general terms as the realms of light, they speak of the wicked as being thrown or falling into karta, a pit (Rv. II. 29, 6; IX. 73, 8–9). They also speak of a deep place (padam gabhîram, IV. 5, 5) and of lower darkness (adharam tamah, X. 152, 4) as their abode. There are some more passages in the Rig-veda which may refer to punishment after death. Thus we read (II. 29, 6), 'Protect us, O gods, from being devoured by the wolf, or from falling into the pit.' And again (IX. 73, 8-9), 'The wise guardian of the law is not to be deceived; he has placed purifiers (conscience) in the heart; he knowing looks upon all things, and hurls the wicked and lawless into the pit.' In the Atharva-veda the description of the abode of the wicked becomes more and more minute. We read (II. 14, 3) of a house (griha) for evil spirits, and even the modern name of Naraka for hell occurs in it. All this agrees with what we know from other sources of the chronological relation of Vedic hymns, Upanishads, and Manu's Laws. The Upanishads speak of a third path, besides the two paths that lead to the Fathers and to the Gods, and they say (Brih. Âr. VI. 2, 16): Those who do not know these two paths become worms, birds and creeping things.' We also read in some Upanishads, that there are unblessed or asurya worlds, covered with blind darkness whither fools go after death. The Brahmanas are sometimes more explicit in their accounts of hell1, and in one passage of the Satapatha Brâhmana (XI. 7, 2, 33), we actually find a mention of the weighing of the soul, a conception so well known from Egyptian tombs. Bridges. The more we advance, the fuller the details become about the two roads, the road leading to the Pitris and the road leading to the Devas. I shall here call your attention to one passage only in the Mahâbhârata which is highly important, because the two roads are here for the first time2 called Setus, or bridges (Anu 1 Weber, Z. D. M. G., ix. p. 240. How familiar the idea of a bridge between this world and the next must have been in Vedic times also, is shown by the frequent allusions to the Atman, as the true bridge from Schein to Sein; Khand. Up. VIII. 4, 1, &c. gîtâ, XX. p. 316), bridges of virtue or piety. It was generally supposed that the idea of a bridge connecting this world with the next was peculiar to Persia, where the famous Kinvat bridge forms so prominent a feature in the ancient religion. But the relation between the Veda and the Avesta is so peculiar and so intimate, that we can hardly doubt that the belief in bridges between this world and the next was either borrowed directly by the Persians from the Vedic poets, or that it was inherited by both from their common ancestors. It is quite true that the same idea of a bridge between this and the next world occurs in other countries also, where a direct influence of Indian thought is out of the question, as, for instance, among some North-American Indians 1. But it is not a bridge of virtue or of judgment as in India and Persia. The idea of a bridge or a mere communication between this and the next world is in fact so natural that it may be called the easiest and probably the earliest solution of the problem with which, though from a higher point of view, we are occupied in this course of lectures, the relation between the natural and the supernatural. When people had once learnt to believe in a Beyond, they felt a gap between the here and the there, which the human mind could not brook, and which it tried, therefore, to bridge over, at first mythologically, and afterwards philosophically. The earliest, as yet purely mythological, attempt to connect the world of men and the world of the gods is the belief in a bridge called Bifröst, lit. trembling rest, such as we find it in Northern mythology. It was clearly in 1 Jones, Traditions of the North-American Indians, vol. i. p. 227. tended originally for the rainbow. We are told that it was created by the gods, and was called the bridge of the Ases or the gods, the As-brû. It had three colours, and was supposed to be very strong. But however strong it was, it is believed that it will break at the end of the world, when the sons of Muspel come to ride across it. The Ases or gods ride every day across that bridge to their judgment seat near the well of Urd. It has a watchman also, who is called Heimdall. This is a purely mythological expedient to connect heaven and earth, for which Physical Religion chose very naturally the emblem of the rainbow. In India and Persia, however, the case is different. First of all the bridge there is not taken from anything in nature. It is rather an ethical postulate. There must be a way, they argued, on which the soul can approach the deity or by which it can be kept away from the deity,—hence they imagined that there was such a way. That way in India was the Road of the Fathers and afterwards the Road of the Gods. Eut it is very important to observe that in India also this road (yâna) was called setu, bridge, though it had not yet received a proper name. the Veda, Rv. I. 38, 5, the path of Yama is mentioned, which is really the same as the Road of the Fathers, for Yama was originally the ruler of the Fathers. If therefore the poets say, Mâ vo garitâ pathâ Yamasya gâd upa, May your worshipper not go on the path of Yama, they simply mean, may he not yet die. When there was once a bridge, a river also would soon be imagined which the bridge was to cross. Such a river, though it does not occur in the hymns, occurs In |