The doctrine of metempsychosis, or transmigration of souls, is admitted by the Burmans, but is not precisely of the same character with that of the Hindoos, or the improved system promulgated by Pythagoras. They maintain that the soul and body perish together, and that then a new body and soul are formed from the fragments, and that its nature agrees with the deservings of the individual. Thus every one gradually attains higher excellence, becoming successively a Nat, a Rupa, an Arupa, &c., till at length the individual attains that high state of eternal calm known by the name of Nieban. This state of existence has been generally translated annihilation, and, as Crawfurd observes,[95] this misconception has thrown “an unmerited share of obloquy on the worship of Budd’ha.” Dr. Buchanan remarks, that the term is very inaccurately translated;[96] and Colebrooke was the first to give a correct definition of it, in an essay on the Philosophy of Indian Sectaries.[97] Sangermano’s definition I subjoin:—“This consists in an almost perpetual ecstasy, in which those who attain it are not only free from the troubles and miseries of life, from death, illness, and old age, but are abstracted from all sensation; they have no longer a thought or desire.”[98] Human life is continually on the decrease or the increase. At first men attained to an age which can only be conceived by this calculation. “It is said, that if it should rain continually for the space of three years over the whole world, which is 1,203,430 juzenà in diameter, the number of drops of rain fallen in this time would express the number of years that compose an assenchiè,”[99] the term implying the whole period. But the wickedness of man caused his life to be more and more limited, and it reached at length to ten years only. From that time it increased, on their becoming more virtuous, and again they lived an assenchiè. This increase and decrease is to be fulfilled sixty-four times before the destruction of the world. This variation is however limited to the inhabitants of Zabudiba. Space will not permit me to give the description I would of the northern island, where the Burman Utopia is placed. The philosophical inquirer will find it in Sangermano and Buchanan. The Nats, or genii, have their various seats in the intermediate space between Mienmò and the confines of the world, and live in different degrees of happiness and power. These abodes of the Nats are represented as very delightful, and it is thither that the devout Buddhist hopes to come. The four conditions of punishment are, degradation into beasts; Preitta, a state of sorrow resembling the Tartarus of the Hellenes; the Assurichè, almost identical with Preitta; and Niria, the actual hell of the Burmese.