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(noticeably parts of the first, fourth, eighth, and tenth books), a religion which, in spiritual tone, in metaphysical speculation, and even in the interpretation of some of the natural divinities, differs not more from the bulk of the Rig Veda than does the social status of the time from that of the earlier text. Religion has become, in so far as the gods are concerned, a ritual. But, except in the building up of a Father-god, theology is at bottom not much altered, and the eschatological conceptions remain about as they were, despite a preliminary sign of the doctrine of metempsychosis. In the Atharva Veda, for the first time, hell is known by its later name (xii. 4. 36), and perhaps its tortures; but the idea of future punishment appears plainly first in the Brahmanic period. Both the doctrine of re-birth and that of hell appear in the earliest S[=u]tras, and consequently the assumption that these dogmas come from Buddhism does not appear to be well founded; for it is to be presumed whatever religious belief is established in legal literature will have preceded that literature by a considerable period, certainly by a greater length of time than that which divides the first Brahmanic law from Buddhism.
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FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: Compare the accounts of Lafitau; of the native Iroquois, baptized as Morgan; and the works of Schoolcraft and Parkman.]
[Footnote 2: Jesuits in North America, Introduction, p. Ixi.]
[Footnote 3: "Like other Indians, the Hurons were desperate gamblers, staking their all, ornaments, clothing, canoes, pipes, weapons, and wives," loc. cit. p. xxxvi. Compare Palfrey, of Massachusetts Indians. The same is true of all savages.]
[Footnote 4: lb. p. lxvii.]