'Where there is eternal light, in the world where the sun is placed, in that
immortal imperishable world place me, O Soma!
Where king Vaivasvata reigns, where the secret place of heaven is, where these mighty waters are, there make me immortal!
Where life is free, in the third heaven of heavens, where the worlds are radiant, there make me immortal!
Where wishes and desires are, where the place of the bright sun is, where there is freedom and delight, there make me immortal!
Where there is happiness and delight, where joy and pleasure reside, where the desires of our desire are attained, there make me immortal!'[1]
In such bright vague thoughts from the poet's religion of nature, or in cosmic schemes of ancient astronomy, with their artificial glories of barbaric architecture exaggerated in the skies, or in the raptures of mystic vision, or in the calmer teaching of the theologic doctrine of a future life, descriptions of realms of blessed souls in heaven are to be followed through the religions of the Brahman, the Buddhist, the Parsi, the later Jew, the Moslem, and the Christian.
For the object, not of writing a handbook of religions, but of tracing the relation which the religion of savages bears to the religion of cultured nations, these details are enough to show the general line of human thought regarding the local habitations of departed souls. It seems plain from the most cursory inspection of these various localizations, however much we may consider them as inherited or transmitted from people to people in the complex movements of theological history, that they are at any rate not derived from any single religion accepted among ancient or primæval men. They bear evident traces of independent working out in the varied definition of the region of souls, as on earth among men, on earth in some distant country, below the earth, above or beyond the sky. Similar ideas of this kind are found in different lands, but this simi-
1 Max Müller, 'Chips,' vol. i. p. 46; Roth in 'Zeitschr. d. Deutsch. Morgenl. Ges.' vol. iv. p. 427.
- ↑ 1
