not, when his time for rebirth comes, pass into a
human form. He is delayed, therefore, and is attached to the body of one
of the lower creatures as a co-tenant with the animal, vegetable, or
mineral Jiva [life], until he has worn out the bonds of these non-human
qualities and is fit to take birth again in the world of men. A very
strong and excessive attachment to an animal may have similar results."
Where modern ideas reach in India, one can understand such ideas as
those melting away. A second passage from the Text-book is interesting,
as showing the compiler's idea of the place of a life in Europe in the
chain of existences, although in this case also the statement is made
only about "ancient days." "The Jivatma [soul] was prepared for entrance
into each [Indian] caste through a long preliminary stage _outside_
India; then he was born into India and passed into each caste to receive
its definite lessons; then was born away from India to practise these
lessons; usually returning to India to the highest of them, in the final
stages of his evolution." In other words, people of the outer world, say
Europeans, are rewarded for virtue by being born into the lowest Indian
caste, and then, after rising to be brahmans in India, they go back to
Europe to give it the benefit of their acquirements; and finally crown
their career by reappearing in India as a brahman philosopher or jogi.
Surely we may laugh at this without being thought unsympathetic or
narrow-minded. We recall Mrs. Besant's assertion that she had a dim
recollection of an existence as a brahman pandit in India. According to
the spiritual genealogy of the _Hindu Text-book_, she may hope to be
born next in an Indian child, and become a jogi possessed of saving
knowledge of the identity of self with Deity.

[Sidenote: The women of the middle class and transmigration.]

I asked a lady who had been a missionary in Calcutta for many years, how
far a belief in transmigration was apparent among the women of the
middle class. She could recall only two instances in which it had come
to her notice in her talks with the wives and daughters of educated
India. Once a reason was given for being kind to a cat, that the
speaker's grandmother might then be in it as her abode, although the
observation was accompanied with a laugh. On the second occasion, when
the lady was having trouble with a slow pupil, one of the women present,
sympathising with the teacher, said, "Do not troubl