hing to the highest heaven, and the entire space
were filled with mustard seeds, a god might take these seeds, and,
looking towards any one of the cardinal points, throw a single
seed towards each sakwala until all the seeds were gone, and still
there would be more sakwalas, in the same direction, to which no
seed had been thrown, without considering those in the other three
quarters of the heavens. In comparison with this Eastern vision of
the infinitude of worlds, the wildest Western dreamer over the
vistas opened by the telescope may hide his diminished head! Their
other conceptions are of the same crushing magnitude, Thus, when
the demons, on a certain occasion, assailed the gods, Siva using
the Himalaya range for his bow, Vasuke for the string, Vishnu for
his arrow, the earth for his chariot with the sun and moon for its
wheels and the Vedas for its horses, the starry canopy for his
banner with the tree of Paradise for its staff, Brahma for his
charioteer, and the mysterious monosyllable Om for his whip
reduced them all to ashes.4

The five hundred million Brahmanic and Buddhist believers hold
that all the gods, men, demons, and various grades of animal life
occupying this immeasurable array of worlds compose one cosmic
family. The totality of animated beings, from a detestable gnat to

2 Wilson's trans. pp. 207-209.

3 Upham's trans. vol. iii. pp. 8, 66, 159.

4 Vans Kennedy, Ancient and Hindu Mythology, p. 429.

thundering Indra, from the meanest worm to the supreme Buddha,
constitute one fraternal race, by the unavoidable effects of the
law of retribution constantly interchanging their residences in a
succession of rising and sinking existences, ranging through all
the earths, heavens, and hells of the universe, bound by the
terrible links of merit and demerit in the phantasmagoric dungeon
of births and deaths. The Vishnu Purana declares, "The universe,
this whole egg of Brahma, is everywhere swarming with living
creatures, all of whom are captives in the chains of acts." 5

The one prime postulate of these Oriental faiths the ground
principle, never to be questioned any more than the central and
stationary position of the earth in the Ptolemaic system is that
all beings below the Infinite One are confined in the circle of
existence, the whirl of births and deaths, by the consequences of
their virtues and vices. When a man dies, if he has an excess of
good desert, he is born, as a superior being, in on