The transformation into beasts is reserved for those who do not keep a sufficient restraint over themselves, and who speak in a heedless and evil manner. Those who neglect to give alms, too, pass into this condition. An elephant lives sixty years, a horse thirty, an ox and a dog, ten, and upon this they base their calculations.[100] In the second state of punishment, Preitta, the condemned are obliged to live upon disgusting filth, and inhabit sewers, cisterns, and tombs. Some wander naked through gloomy forests, making them re-echo with their lamentations, exposed to storms, and fainting with hunger and thirst. Some plough the ground with a plough of fire; others feed on their own flesh and blood, and tear themselves with hooks; and some are tormented by fire. Misers, uncharitable persons, persons who give alms to the wrong Rahaans or priests, are condemned to Preitta. Assurichè is very like Preitta in its punishments, only every torment is here more acute and frightful. Quarrelsome persons, strikers with weapons, advancers and abettors of bad men, are sent thither. In the fourth hell, Niria, the sufferings are by fire and cold. It is situated in the midst of the great stone Silapatavi, and is divided into many hells. Here the worst of mankind are punished, and here sit the judges, selected from the dead, upon their peculiar expiation. The time of confinement in all these places is undecided, and very few, if any, are sentenced to eternal punishment. By good behaviour in all these places the sufferers may attain to the position of insects, and gradually rise through all gradations, and finally attain Nieban.[101] The crimes and their punishments are very whimsical, and some very horrid. They are given at length in Sangermano. However, a spirit of mercy runs through all their dogmas, and, as already observed, every one may regain his lost position, though it is this southern island that is the most favoured; for here only can the believer attain Nieban. The infidels only are condemned to eternal torment. I may conclude this account of the Burman cosmography with a few lines of the oldest writer on Hellenic philosophy, in which a very tolerable description of the nature of the Nat is given. When in the dark and dread abodes of earth, The men of earliest golden age were laid, Their bones remained, but, soaring to the sky, Their life-enduring souls fled far on high; Still hov’ring there above the realms of earth, Still loving much the land that gave them birth, They kindly watch o’er the affairs of men. Spirits beneficent, clad in the filmy air, They take their rapid flight, and with a lib’ral hand, Like kings, they scatter wealth and justice in their fatherland.[102]