we find that the theory of evolution is combined
with the theory of creation, so that Prajapati is sometimes
spoken of as the creator while at other times the creator is said
to have floated in the primeval water as a cosmic golden egg.

Eschatology; the Doctrine of Atman.

There seems to be a belief in the Vedas that the soul could
be separated from the body in states of swoon, and that it could
exist after death, though we do not find there any trace of the
doctrine of transmigration in a developed form. In the S'atapatha
Brahma@na it is said that those who do not perform rites with
correct knowledge are born again after death and suffer death
again. In a hymn of the @Rg-Veda (X. 58) the soul (_manas_) of a man
apparently unconscious is invited to come back to him from the
trees, herbs, the sky, the sun, etc. In many of the hymns there
is also the belief in the existence of another world, where the
highest material joys are attained as a result of the performance
of the sacrifices and also in a hell of darkness underneath
where the evil-doers are punished. In the S'atapatha
Brahma@na we find that the dead pass between two fires which burn the
evil-doers, but let the good go by [Footnote ref 1]; it is also said
there that everyone is born again after death, is weighed in a balance,
and receives reward or punishment according as his works are good or bad.
It is easy to see that scattered ideas like these with regard to
the destiny of the soul of man according to the sacrifice that he
performs or other good or bad deeds form the first rudiments of
the later doctrine of metempsychosis. The idea that man enjoys
or suffers, either in another world or by being born in this world
according to his good or bad deeds, is the first beginning of the
moral idea, though in the Brahmanic days the good deeds were

_____________________________________________________________________

[Footnote 1: See _S.B._ I. 9.3, and also Macdonell's _Vedic Mythology_,
pp. 166, 167.]

26

more often of the nature of sacrificial duties than ordinary good
works. These ideas of the possibilities of a necessary connection
of the enjoyments and sorrows of a man with his good and bad
works when combined with the notion of an inviolable law or
order, which we have already seen was gradually growing with
the conception of @rta, and the unalterable law which produces
the effects of sacrificial works, led to the Law of Karma and the
doctrine of tra