he emanations or phases of
the deity and the theory of the correspondence between macrocosm and
microcosm, are amazingly like Indian Tantrism but no doubt are more
justly regarded as belonging to the religious ideas common to most of
Asia.[1171] But in two points we seem able to discern definite Hindu
influence. These are metempsychosis and pantheism, which we have so
often found to have some connection with India when they exist in an
extreme form. Their presence here is specially remarkable because they
are alien to the spirit of orthodox Judaism. Yet the pre-existence and
repeated embodiment of the soul is taught in the Zohar and even more
systematically by Luria, in whose school were composed works called
Gilgulim, or lists of transmigrations. The ultimate Godhead is called
En soph or the infinite and is declared to be unknowable, not to be
described by positive epithets, and therefore in a sense non-existent,
since nothing which is predicated of existing beings can be truly
predicated of it. These are crumbs from the table of Plotinus and the
Upanishads.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1164: But see on this point _Census of India_, 1911, vol. I.
part I. p. 128.]

[Footnote 1165: Another instance is the shrine of Saiyad Salar Masud
at Bahraich. He was a nephew of Mahmud of Ghazni and was slain by
Hindus, but is now worshipped by them. See Grierson, _J.R.A.S._ 1911,
p. 195.]

[Footnote 1166: See for examples, _Census of India_, 1901, Panjab, p.
151, _e.g._ the Brahmans of a village near Rawal Pindi are said to be
Murids of Abdul-Kadir-Jilani.]

[Footnote 1167: _Census of India_, 1911, vol. I. part I. p. 195. The
Malkanas are described on the same page.]

[Footnote 1168: Such as Ghazi Miyan, Pir Badar, Zindha Ghazi, Sheikh
Farid, Sheikh Sadu and Khwaja Khizr.]

[Footnote 1169: E.G. Browne, _Literary History of Persia_: R.A.
Nicholson, _Selected Poems from the Divan of Shems-i-Tabriz_.]

[Footnote 1170: He describes how he discovered the mechanism by which
the priests made miraculous images move. See Browne, _Lit. Hist.
Persia_, II. 529.]

[Footnote 1171: But there is something very Indian in the reluctance
of the Kabbalists to accept creation _ex nihilo_ and to explain it
away by emanations, or by the doctrine of limitation, that is God's
self-withdrawal in order that the world might be created, or even by
the eternity of matter.]

INDEX

Abbot. _See_ Monasteries, and Organisation--ecclesiastical

Abd