Eschatology; the Doctrine of Âtman. 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 Brâhma@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 Brâhma@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