l culture. But in very early times the belief
in the intimate connection between body and soul appears in the care
taken among certain peoples to preserve the bones or the whole body of
the deceased as a possible future abode for the soul;[184] and, on the
other hand, as the soul, it was held, might return to the body and be
dangerous to the living, means were sometimes employed to frighten it
off. It seems to have been believed in some cases that the destruction
of the body involved the destruction of the soul (New Zealand). An
actual entrance of a departed soul into a human body is involved in some
early forms of the doctrine of reincarnation,[185] but this is not the
restoration of the dead man's own body. It was held in Egypt (and not
improbably elsewhere) that the soul after death might desire to take
possession of its own body, and provision was made for such an
emergency; but this belief seems not to have had serious results for
religious life. A temporary reunion of soul and body appears in the
figure of the vampire, which, however, is a part of a popular belief and
religiously not important. But these passing beliefs indicate a general
tendency, and may have paved the way for the more definite conception of
bodily restoration.
+89+. The more developed Hindu doctrine (Brahmanic, Jainistic,
Buddhistic) recognized a great variety of possible forms of
reincarnation (human and nonhuman), and made a step forward by including
the continuity or reestablishment of moral life and responsibility (the
doctrine of karma).[186] It, however, never reached the form of a
universal or partial resurrection.
+90+. The birthplace of this latter doctrine appears to have been the
region in which Mazdaism arose, the country south of the Caspian Sea.
Windischmann infers from Herodotus, iii, 62, that it appears as a
Mazdean belief as early as the sixth century B.C.[187] This is doubtful,
but it is reported as a current belief by Theopompus.[188] Its
starting-point was doubtless the theory of reincarnation, which, we may
suppose, the Iranian Aryans shared with their Indian brethren. Precisely
what determined the Iranian movement toward this specific form of
reincarnation we have no means of knowing. It may be due to the same
genius for simple organization that led the Zoroastrians to discard the
mass of the old gods and elevate Ahura Mazda to the chief place in the
pantheon; their genius for practical social religious organization may
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