e relegated to no
distant future."[113] Heaven and Hell are mocked at as absurdities by
the new sect of the [=A]ryas in the United Provinces and the Punjab, who
retain the doctrine of transmigration.[114]

[Sidenote: Several heavens and hells in popular Hinduism.]

Hindus are divided as to the existence of these temporary halting-places
between the successive incarnations of the soul. The _Text-book of Hindu
Religion_, already referred to, speaks unhesitatingly about their place
in the Hindu system. The [=A]ryas, on the other hand, hold that the
instant a soul leaves its body it enters another body just born. The
soul is never naked--to employ a common figure. Of course in popular
Hinduism it is not surprising to find not merely the ideas of Heaven and
Hell, but even that each chief Deity has his own heaven and that there
are various hells. In the Tantras or ritual books of modern Hinduism,
there is frequent mention of such heavens and hells, and when the idea
of rebirths is also met with, the rebirths are regarded as stages
towards the reward or punishment of the _individual conscious_ souls. It
is the popular idea of heaven that has given rise to the common
euphemism for _to die_, namely, to become a deva or inhabitant of
heaven.

[Sidenote: Transmigration, associated with pessimism and pantheism, is
likewise yielding.]

We have observed the pessimistic mood of India yielding before the
improved conditions of life, and the brahmanical pantheism before the
thought of God the Father. Bound up as the idea of transmigration has
been with the pessimism and pantheism of India, we are prepared to find
that it too is yielding. Of that we now ask what evidence there is in
the ordinary speech and writings of educated India, apart from
controversy or professedly Hindu writings, in which the accepted Indian
orthodoxy would probably appear.

[Sidenote: Educated Hindus speak of the dead as if their former
consciousness continued.]

From the ordinary speeches and writings of educated Hindus regarding the
dead, no one would infer that their doctrinal standpoint was other than
that of the ordinary religious Briton, namely, that the dead friend has
returned to God or has been called away by God, or the like. A native
judge in Bengal, one of the most distinguished leaders of the Hindu
Revival, writes as follows: The beatitude which the new
Radha-Krishnaites aspire to "is not the Nirvana of the Vedantists, the
quiescence of Ratio