Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | Page 598

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PENALTIES FOR DIFFERENT SINS
lie will be born a Pariah, and will be afflicted with leprosy
for a period of ten thousand years.
The murder of a Brahmin, for any cause whatsoever, is
a sin four times more heinous than the former. Whoever
is guilty of it will be condemned at his death to take the
form of one of those insects which feed on filth. Being
reborn long afterwards a Pariah, he will belong to this
caste, and will be blind for more than four times as many
years as there are hairs on the body of a cow. He can,
nevertheless, expiate his crime by feeding forty thousand
'
Brahmins.
If a Brahmin
kills a Sudra, it will suffice to efface the
he recites the gayatri a hundred times.
He who kills an insect will himself become an insect
Then he will be reborn a Sudra, but he will
after death.
be subject to all sorts of infirmities.
Every Brahmin who cooks for a Sudra or who travels
mounted on an ox will go to hell after death. He will be
plunged there into boiling oil and be bitten continuously by
venomous snakes. He will be reborn afterwards under the
form of one of those birds of prey which devour corpses,
and will remain a thousand years under this form, and also
a hundred years under the form of a dog.
Whoever fells a sacred fig-tree commits a crime four
times greater; than the murder of a Brahmin, and will be
exposed after his death to penalties proportionate to a sin
'
sin altogether
if
1
'
'
so heinous.'
Several modern philosophers have maintained that
Pythagoras attached on