Whence, Though They Have Other And Good Provisions In
Abundance, We Meet With Very Little Meat In That Country.
The most tender-hearted among the idolaters are called Banians, who
hold the metempsychosis of Pythagoras as a prime
Article of their
faith, believing that the souls of the best men and women, when freed
from the prison of their human bodies, transmigrate into the bodies of
cows, which they consider as the best of all creatures. They hold that
the souls of the wicked go into the bodies of viler beasts; as the souls
of gluttons into swine, those of the voluptuous and incontinent into
apes and monkies; the souls of the cruel, furious, and revengeful, into
lions, tigers, and wolves; the souls of the envious into serpents; and
so forth, according to their qualities and dispositions; transmigrating
successively from one to another of the same kind, ad infinitum; and,
by consequence, believing in the eternal duration of the world. Thus,
according to them, there does not exist even a silly fly but is actuated
by a soul formerly human, considering these to have formerly belonged to
light women; and so incorrigible are their sottish opinions, that they
cannot be persuaded out of them by any reasoning. Owing to these
opinions, they will not put to death the most offensive animals, not
even the most venemous snakes, saying, that it is their nature to do
harm, and that man is gifted with reason to shun these noxious
creatures, but not at liberty to destroy them.
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