ideas of vegetable transmigration can be considered as independent. A curious commentary on the Hindu working out of the conception of plant-souls is to be found in a passage in a 17th-century work, which describes certain Brahmans of the Coromandel Coast as eating fruits, but being careful not to pull the plants up by the roots, lest they should dislodge a soul; but few, it is remarked, are so scrupulous as this, and the consideration has occurred to them that souls in roots and herbs are most vile and abject bodies, so that if dislodged they may become better off by entering into the bodies of men or beasts.[1] Moreover, the Brahmanic doctrine of souls transmigrating into inert things has in like manner a bearing on the savage theory of object-souls.[2]
Buddhism, like the Brahmanism from which it seceded, habitually recognized transmigration between superhuman and human beings and the lower animals, and in an exceptional way recognized a degradation even into a plant or a thing. How the Buddhist mind elaborated the doctrine of metempsychosis, may be seen in the endless legends of Gautama himself undergoing his 550 births, suffering pain and misery through countless ages to gain the power of freeing sentient beings from the misery inherent in all existence. Four times he became Maha Brahma, twenty times the dewa Sekra, and many times or few he passed through such stages as a hermit, a king, a rich man, a slave, a potter, a gambler, a curer of snake bites, an ape, an elephant, a bull, a serpent, a snipe, a fish, a frog, the dewa or genius of a tree. At last, when he became the supreme Buddha, his mind, like a vessel overflowing with honey, overflowed with the ambrosia of truth, and he proclaimed his triumph over life:—
- ↑ Abraham Roger, 'La Porte Ouverte,' Amst. 1670, p. 107.
- ↑ Manu, xii. 9: 'c̣arîrajaih karmmadoshaih yâti sthâvaratâm narah'—'for crimes done in the body, the man goes to the inert (motionless) state;' xii. 42, 'sthâvarâh krimakîtac̣cha matsyâh sarpâh sakachhapâh pac̣avac̣cha mrigaschaiva jaghanyâ tâmasî gatih'—'inert (motionless) things, worms and insects, fish, serpents, tortoises and beasts and deer also are the last dark form.'
