Hinduism / by Monier Williams.

  • Monier Monier-Williams
Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hinduism / by Monier Williams. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    if an act be good it must be rewarded, and if bad it must be punished. 5. In order to accomplish the working out of the consequences, or ripenings of acts (karma-vipdka), the soul must be removed to a place of reward or punishment, which reward or punishment, however, is neither full and effectual nor final. For observe that the heavens of the Hindu system are only steps on the road to final beatitude, and the hells, though places of terrible torture,1 are merely temporary purgatories. The soul must leave these and return to corporeal existence, migrating into higher, intermediate, and lower forms, according to its shades of merit or de- merit, and as it progresses towards emancipation from separate existence, passing through the four stages of bliss called sdlokya, living in the same heaven with God, saniipya, nearness to God, sarupya, assimilation to the likeness of God, till the great end of sdyujya, or complete union with the Supreme, has been attained. 6. The transmigration of the soul, through an innumerable succession of bodies,2 is the true ex- planation of the existence of evil in the world. For note that misery, disease, depravity, inequality of fortune, and diversity of character, good or bad, are simply the conse- quences of acts done by each soul of its own free will in former 1 Twenty-one in number. See note 2 to p. 66 of ‘Indian Wisdom.’ (Allen & Co.) 2 The popular theory is that every being must pass through eighty-four lakhs of births, a lakh being one hundred thousand.
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