dence there was naturally but little. The
hunters claimed the deer because they had driven it out of the island by
their fire. The woman resisted the claim on the ground that it was her
son.

The decision of the court was this:

'The hunters are not entitled to the deer because they cannot prove that
the woman's son's soul is not in the animal. The woman is not entitled
to the deer because she cannot prove that it is. The deer will therefore
remain with the court until some properly authenticated claim is put
in.'

So the two parties were turned out, the woman in bitter tears, and the
hunters angry and vexed, and the deer remained the property of the
judge.

But this decision was against all Burmese ideas of justice. He should
have given the deer to the woman. 'He wanted it for himself,' said a
Burman, speaking to me of the affair. 'He probably killed it and ate it.
Surely it is true that officials are of all the five evils the
greatest.' Then my friend remembered that I was myself an official, and
he looked foolish, and began to make complimentary remarks about English
officials, that they would never give such an iniquitous decision. I
turned it off by saying that no doubt the judge was now suffering in
some other life for the evil wrought in the last, and the Burman said
that probably he was now inhabiting a tiger.

It is very easy to laugh at such beliefs; nothing is, indeed, easier
than to be witty at the expense of any belief. It is also very easy to
say that it is all self-deception, that the children merely imagine that
they remember their former lives, or are citing conversation of their
elders.

How this may be I do not know. What is the explanation of this, perhaps
the only belief of which we have any knowledge which is at once a living
belief to-day and was so as far back as we can get, I do not pretend to
say. For transmigration is no theory of Buddhism at all, but was a
leading tenet in the far older faith of Brahmanism, of which Buddhism
was but an offshoot, as was Christianity of Judaism.

I have not, indeed, always attempted to reach the explanation of things
I have seen. When I have satisfied myself that a belief is really held
by the people, that I am not the subject of conscious deception, either
by myself or others, I have conceived that my work was ended.

There are those who, in investigating any foreign customs and strange
beliefs, can put their finger here and say, 'This is where they