Upanisads ¹ teaches that those who have done good works go after death and dwell in the moon, till they have enjoyed the full reward of their good deeds. They then return to the earth as plants, and are afterwards born again as men. Good conduct leads to rebirth as a Brahman, as a Kshattriya or as a Vaisya, these being the three highest castes among the Hindus. A man whose conduct has been very bad is born again as a dog, a hog, or a chandala, a member of the very lowest class among the Hindus. Manu ² agrees in some measure with this. He says that the three attributes of goodness, activity and darkness produce in each man good or bad deeds, words and thought. For sins of act a man becomes a vegetable or a mineral in another birth; for sins of word a bird or beast; for sins of thought, a man of the lowest caste. Triple self-command, ³ (that is to say, abstinence from the commission of anything contrary to caste-rules) in thought, word and deed, leads to final (moksha) emancipation from transmigration, and thus conducts to absorption ⁴ in the one existent thing.

Believing in the existence of many separate gods and goddesses as the ordinary Hindus do, it is noteworthy that in their sacred books such lofty titles are given by the worshipper to each of the chief

deities individually that any one not well acquainted with their religion would fancy that each particular god was regarded as the supreme and only God. But this is by no means the case. Each of the most important deities is said to have a heaven of his own, full of carnal pleasures. Brahma's heaven is called Brahmaloka; Vishnu's heaven, Vaikuntha, is on the eastern slope of Mt. Meru, a fabulous mountain in the centre of the world. For example, Kailasa, on a Himalayan peak, is Siva's paradise. In Indra's heaven, called Svarga, dwell the Apsarasas (or Hur) and the Gandharvas (or Ghilman), regarding whom we do not propose to say anything here. In the Nalopakhyana ¹ it is said that warriors who die bravely in battle go to Indra's heaven, and Manu ² teaches the same thing.

One of the noteworthy doctrines of the Hindus is that of the 'descents' (avatara) of Vishnu, one of their chief gods. They say that at different times he appeared upon earth as a fish,³ a tortoise, a boar, a man lion, a dwarf, the two Ramas, Krishna and Buddha, and that finally, when the time has come for the destruction of the universe by water and fire, he will appear as Kalki, mounted on a white horse and bearing in his hand a drawn sword, with which he will slay evil men.⁴ In each