and so of the rest And in a word they are not humble and they have rather the Idea's of Humiliations and Mortifications than of Humility They seem to understand Entertaining and Retirement A Talapoin sins Some Appearances of certain Monastick Vertues in the Talapoins if in walking along the Streets he has not his Senses composed A Talapoin sins if he meddles with State Affairs They concern not themselves therein without a great deal of Distraction and without attracting the Envy and Hatred of several which suits not to a Talapoin who ought only to mind his Convent and to edifie every one by his Modesty But moreover I believe that a wise Policy has greatly contributed to interdict State-Affairs to persons who have so great a Power upon the Minds of the People They understand Religious Obedience Obedience is the Vertue of every one in this Country and it is no wonder that it is found in their Cloisters They likewise understand Chastity A Talapoin sins if he coughs to attract on him the Eyes of the Women if he beholds a Woman with Complacency or if he desires one if he uses Perfumes about his Person if he puts Flowers to his Ears and in a word if he adorns himself with too much Care And some would likewise say they understand Poverty because it is prohibited them to have more than one Vestment and to have it precious To keep any thing to eat from the Evening till the next day to touch either Gold or Silver or to desire it But at the bottom as they may abandon their Profession they act so well that if they live poorly whilst they are Talapoins they fail not to heap wherewith to live at their Ease when they cease to be so And these are the Idea's which the Siameses have of Vertue CHAP. XXII Of the Supream Felicity and Extream Infelicity amongst the Siameses IT remains for me to explain wherein they place perfect Felicity Perfect Felicity that is to say the supream Recompence of good Works and the utmost Degree of Unhappiness that is to say the greatest Punishment of the Guilty They believe therefore that if by several Transmigrations and by a great number of good Works in all the Lives a Soul acquires so much Merit that there is not in any World any mortal Condition that is worthy of it they believe I say that this Soul is then exempt from every Transmigration and every Animation that it has nothing more to do that it neither revives nor dies any more but that it enjoys an eternal Unactivity and a real Impassibility Nireupan say they that is to say this Soul has disappeared it will return no more in any World What the Portugueses have called Paradice and Hell are neither the Perfect Felicity nor the extream Infelicity according to the Siameses and 't is this word which the Portugueses have translated it is annihilated and likewise thus It is become a God though in the Opinion of the Siameses this is not a real Annihilation nor an Acquisition of any divine Nature Such is therefore the true Paradice of the Indians for tho' they suppose a great Felicity in the highest of the nine Paradices of which we have already discoursed yet they say that this Felicity is not eternal nor exempt from all Inquietude seeing that it is a kind of life where one is born and where one dies By the like reason their true Hell is not any of those nine places which we have called Hell and in some of which they suppose Torments and eternal Flames for tho' there may eternally be some Souls in these Hells these will not always be the same No Soul will be eternally punished they will revive again to live there a certain time and to depart thence by death The utmost degree of Infelicity But the true Hell of the Indians is only as I have already said the eternal Transmigrations of these Souls which will never arrive at the Nireupan that is to say will never disappear in the whole duration of the World which they do think must be eternal They believe that it is for the Sins of these Souls and for their want of ever acquiring a sufficient merit that they shall continually pass from one Body to another The Body whatever it be is always according to them a Prison for the Soul wherein it is punished for its Faults The Wonders which they relate of a Man that deserves the Nireupan and how they consecrate their Temples to him But before that a Man enters into the supreme Felicity before that he disappears to speak like them they believe that after the Action by which he concludes to merit the Nireupan he enjoys great Priviledges from this life They believe that it is then that such a Man preaches up Vertue to others with much more efficacy that he acquires a prodigious Science an invincible strength of Body the power of doing Miracles and the knowledge of whatever has befallen him in all the Transmigrations of his Soul and of whatever should happen to him till his death His death must likewise be of a singular sort which they think more noble than the common way of dying He disappears they say like a Spark which is lost in the Air. And it is to the memory of these sorts of Men that the Siameses do consecrate their Temples Tho' they believe in several they honour only one named Sommona-Codom Now tho' they say that several have attain'd to this Felicity to the end in my opinion that several may hope to arrive thereat yet they honour only one alone whom they esteem to have surpassed all the rest in Vertue They call him Sommona-Codom and they say that Codom was his Name and that Sommona signifies in the Balie Tongue a Talapoin of the Woods According to them there is no true Vertue out of the Talapoin-Profession and they believe the Talapoins of the Woods much more vertuous than those of the Cities No Idea of a Divinity amongst the Siameses And this is certainly the whole Doctrine of the Siameses in which I find no Idea of a Divinity The Gods of the ancient Paganism which we know govern'd Nature punished the wicked and recompenc'd the good and tho' they were born like Men they came of an immortal Race and knew not death The Gods of Epicurus took care of nothing no more than Sommona-Codom but it appears not that they were Men arrived thro' their Vertue at that state of an happy Inactivity they were not born neither did they dye Aristotle has acknowledged a first Mover that is to say a powerful Being who had ranged Nature and who had given it as I may say the swing which preserv'd the harmony therein But the Siameses have not any such Idea being far from acknowledging a God Creator and so I believe it may be asserted that the Siameses have no Idea of any God and that their Religion is reduced all
mouth of their River when the Sea is retired but as the Fire never consumes all and as it principally spares the Bones the Siameses and Peguins do put these remains of their Kings under Pyramids These Pyramids are called Pra Tchiai di Pra is that Baly Term which I have frequently mentioned Tchiai-di signifies Good Heart that is to say Contentment as I have explained it in the other part So that Pra Tchiai-di amounts to these words sacred repose as much as those of Repose and Contentment do resemble From whence came the fancy of Pyramids for Tombs A Tomb quite flat like ours would not in their opinion be honourable enough they must have something of Eminence and this is the fancy of the Pyramids of Aegypt and the Mausolea Some People yet more vain have joyned Epitaphs thereto and because that time effaces the Inscriptions which are exposed to view others have secretly put their names on the principal Stones of certain stately edifices So that when they are discovered their work is already demolished to the Foundation The Siameses still keep to the first degree of Vanity which is single Pyramids without any Epitaph and so slightly erected that those which last longest do never last an Age. Why the Siameses love to build Temples Those that have neither Temple nor Pyramid do sometimes keep at their house the ill burnt remains of their Parents But there hardly is a Siamese rich enough to build a Temple who does it not and who buries not the Riches he has remaining The Temples are inviolable Sanctuaries as I have said and the Kings of Siam as well as particular persons commit their Treasures to them I know that the Siameses have demanded some smooth Files of the Europeans to cut the great Iron Bars which linked the Stones in the Temples under which there was Gold concealed The Siameses which have not wherewith to build a Temple cease not at least to make some Idol which they give to some of the Temples already built Which in these People is a sentiment of Vanity or Religion whereas the building of Temples may be as much the Interest of preserving their Riches to their Family as any other thing The Poor interr their Parents without burning them The Funerals of the Poor but if it is possible for them they invite the Talapoins who stir not without a Gratuity Those that have not wherewithal to pay the Talapoins do think they do honor enough to their dead Parents to expose them in the Field on an eminent place that is to say on a Scaffold where the Vulturs and the Crows devour them I have already said Funeral honors retarded that in Epidemical Distempers they bury the Bodies without burning them and that they dig them up and burn them some years after when they think all the danger of the Infection is past But they never burn those that Justice cuts off nor Infants dead-born Those that are deprived of Funeral Honors nor Women that die in Child-bed nor those which drown themselves or which perish by any other extraordinary disaster as by a Thunderbolt They rank these unfortunate persons amongst the guilty because they believe that such Misfortunes never happen to innocent Persons Mourning at China is prescirbed by the Law Mourning and that for the Father and Mother lasts three years and deprives or bereaves the Son during this time of all sorts of publick Employment if it is not Military though to me it seems that this exception as to Millitary Employments is a late establishment On the contrary the Siameses have no forced Mourning they give marks of Sorrow only as much as they are Afflicted so that it is more common at Siam that the Father and the Mother put on Mourning for their Children than that the Children wear it for their Father and Mother Sometimes the Father turns Talapoin and the Mother Talapoinesse or at least they shave the head one of the other but there is only the true Talapoins that can likewise shave the Eye-brows To me it appeared not that the Siameses invoke their dead Parents Whether the Siameses pray to the Dead what enquiry soever I have made upon it but they cease not to believe themselves frequently tormented with their Apparitions and then they carry Viands to their Tombs which the Beasts do eat and they give Alms for them to the Talapoins because they think that Charity is a Ransom for the Sins of the dead as well as of the living Besides this the Siameses almost on all occasions do offer up Prayers to the good Genij and imprecations against the bad of which I have already given some examples And these Genij are certainly in their opinion only Souls all as I have said of the same Nature The wicked Genij are the Souls of those which dye How it must be understood that the Souls of the Good are changed into Angels and the Souls of the wicked into Devils either by the hand of Justice or by some of those extraordinary misfortunes which make them to be judged unworthy of Funeral Honors The good Genij are all the other Souls esteemed more or less good according as they have been more or less Virtuous in this life And this wholly resembles the Opinion of Plato who requires that one should adhere to Vertue during life to the end that the custom thereof may continue after death This amounts likewise to that Antient Opinion which was spread also amongst some of the Antient Christians that the Souls of the good are changed into Angels and the Souls of the wicked into Devils But amongst the Indians this doctrine is no other than that the Souls of the good spring up again after Death in one of those places which the Portugueses have called Paradice and the Souls of the wicked in one of those other places which they do call Hell Some continuing to be good after Death do good to men others continuing to be wicked do hurt to men and every thing else as much as they can And who knows whether these several Paradices which they believe are not a confused remembrance of the several Orders of the Celestial Spirits Now through an incredible blindness The Indians have no God which is the Judge of Humane Actions the Indians admit not any Intelligent Being which judges of the goodness or badness of Humane actions and which orders the Punishment or Recompence thereof Upon this account they admit only a blind fatalility which say they is the reason that Prosperity accompanies Vertue and Misfortune Vice as it determines heavy things to descend and light things to ascend And because that nothing more repugns reason than to suppose an exact Justice in chance or in the Necessity of Fate the Indian People incline themselves to believe something Corporeal in good or bad works which they say has the power of doing unto men the Good or Evil which they deserve But since we
extreamly liquid the Portuguese of the Indies do call it cange Meat-Broths are mortal at Siam because they too much relax the Stomach and when their Patients are in a condition to eat any thing solid they give them Pigs flesh preferable to any other They do not understand Chymistry although they passionately affect it Their Ignorance in Chymistry and their Fables about this matter and that several amongst them do boast of possessing the most profound secrets thereof Siam like all the rest of the East is full of two sorts of persons upon this account Impostors and Fools The late King of Siam the Father of the present Prince spent two Millions a great summ for his Country in the vain research of the Philosophers Stone and the Chineses reputed so wise have for three or four thousand years had the folly of seeking out an Universal Remedy by which they hope to exempt themselves from the necessity of dying And as amongst us there are some foolish Traditions concerning some rare persons that are reported to have made Gold or to have lived some Ages there are some very strongly established amongst the Chineses the Siameses and the other Orientals concerning those that know how to render themselves immortal either absolutely or in such a manner that they can die no otherwise than of a violent death Wherefore it is supposed that some have withdrawn themselves from the sight of men either to enjoy a free and peaceable Immortality or to secure themselves from all foreign force which might deprive them of their life which no distemper could do They relate wonders concerning the knowledge of these pretended Immortals and it is no matter of astonishment that they think themselves capable of forcing Nature in several things since they imagine that they have had the Art of freeing themselves from Death CHAP. XI What the Siameses do know of the Mathematics The great Heat of Siam repugnant to all application of Mind THE quick and clear Imagination of the Siameses should seem more proper for the Mathematics than the other Studies if it did not soon weary them but they cannot follow a long thread of Ratiocinations of which they do foresee neither the end nor the profit And it must be confessed for their Excuse that all application of Mind is so laborious in a Climate so hot as theirs that the very Europeans could hardly study there what desire soever they might have thereunto The Ignorance of the Siameses touching the principal parts of Mathematics The Siameses do therefore know nothing in Geometry or Mechanics because they can be absolutely without them And Astronomy concerns them only as far as they conceive it may be assistant to Divination They know only some Practical part thereof the Reasons of which they disdain to penetrate but of which they make use in the Horoscopes of particular Persons and in the Composition of their Almanac which as it were is a general Horoscope Of the Siamese Calendar and why they have two Epocha's It appears that they have twice caused their Calendar to be reformed by able Astronomers who to supply the Astronomical Tables have taken two arbitrary Epocha's but yet remarkable for some rare Conjunction of the Planets Having once established certain Numbers upon these Observations they by the means of several Additions Substractions Multiplications and Divisions have given for the following Years the secret of finding the place of the Planets almost as we find the Epact of every Year by adding eleven to the Epact of the Year foregoing The most Modern is evidently Arbitrary The most Modern of the two Siamese Epocha's is referred to the Year of Grace 638. I gave to Mr. Cassini Director of the Observatory at Paris the Siamese Method of finding the place of the Sun and Moon by a Calculation the ground of which is taken from this Epocha And the singular Merit which Mr. Cassini has had of unfolding a thing so difficult and penetrating the Reasons thereof will doubtless be admired by all the Learned Now as this Epocha is visibly the ground only of an Astronomical Calculation and has been chosen rather than another only because it appear'd more commodious to Calculation than another it is evident that we must thence conclude nothing which respects the Siamese History nor imagine that the Year 638 has been more Famous amongst them than another for any Event from which they have thought fit to begin to compute their Years as we compute ours from the Birth of the Saviour of the World The most Ancient also appears Arbitrary By the same Reason I am persuaded that their most Ancient Epocha from which in this Year 1689 they compute 2233 Years has not been remarkable at Siam for any thing worthy of Memory and that it proves not that the Kingdom of Siam is of that Antiquity It is purely Astronomical and serves as a Foundation to another way of calculating the places of the Planets which they have relinquished for that new Method which I have given to Mr. Cassini Some person may discover to them the Mistakes where in process of time this ancient Method must fall as in time we have found out the Errors of the Reformation of the Calendar made by the Order of Julius Caesar And is not taken from the death of Sommona-Codom The Historical Memoirs of the Siameses re-ascending as I have remark'd in the beginning to 900 Years or thereabouts it is not necessary to seek the Foundation of their Kingdom in the 545th Year before the Birth of Jesus Christ nor to suppose that from this time they have enjoyed a Succession of Kings which they themselves are absolutely ignorant of And tho' the Siameses do vulgarly report that this first Epocha from which they compute as I have said 2233 Years is that of the death of their Sommona-Codom and altho' it refers almost to the time in which Pythagoras liv'd who has sowed in the West the Doctrine of the Metempsychosis which he had learnt from the Egyptians yet it is certain that the Siameses have not any Memoirs of the time in which their Sommona-Codom might have lived And I cannot persuade my self that their Sommona-Codom could be Pythagoras who was not in the East nor that their ancient Epocha is other than Astronomical and Arbitrary no more than their Modern Epocha But if the Siameses do still make use thereof in their Dates The Variety of Style in their Dates after having relinquish'd it in their Astronomical Calculations it is because that in things of Style they do not easily alter the Usages unto which they are accustomed and yet they cease not to date sometimes with respect to that modern Epocha which they have taken as I have said from the Year of our Lord 638. But their first Month is always the Moon of November or December in which they depart not from the ancient Style even then when they date the Year according to
They are innumerable at the Isle of Luban which is one of the Phillipines And a little after he subjoyns the Seguejes are brought from the Isles of Baldivia which are the Maldiviae 'T is not easie to say how far the use of this Money extends it self How much the use of this Money is extended It is current throughout India and almost over all the coasts of Africk and some have informed me that it is received in some places of Hungary but I can hardly believe it by reason I see it not worth the trouble to carry it thither It breaks much in the use and as there is less of it it is more worth in respect to the Silver Money as likewise it lowers its price when there arrives any considerable cargo by any Ship for it is a kind of Merchandise The ordinary price at Siam is that a Fouan or the eighth part of a Fical is worth eight hundred Coris or that 7 or 800 Coris are hardly worth a Penny The lowness of Money being a certain sign of a good Market or rather of the cheapness of Commodities CHAP. XV. A Character of the Siameses in general AS easiness of living consists in the reasonable price of things necessary for life The Siameses are good People and as good manners are more easily preserved in a moderate easiness than in a Poverty attended with too much labour or in an over-abundant Idleness it may be affirm'd that the Siameses are good men Vices are detestable amongst them and they excuse them not as witty conceits nor as sublimity of mind A Siamese never so little above the refuse of the people is so far from making himself drunk that he accounts it a shame to drink Arak Adultery is rare at Siam Adultery is rare at Siam not so much because the Husband has the power of doing himself Justice over his Wife that is to say to kill her if he finds her in a palpable offence or to sell her if he can convict her of Infidelity as because the Women are not corrupted by Idleness for it is they that maintain the men by their Labour nor by the Luxury of the Table or of Cloaths nor by Gameing nor by Shows The Siamese Women do not play they receive no Visits from men and Plays are very rare at Siam and have no appointed days nor certain price nor publick Theater It must not however be thought that all Marriages are chaste but at least any other Love more immoderate than that of the Wives is they say without example Jealousie is amongst them only a meer opinion of Glory The Jealousie of the Siameses to their Wives which is greater in those that are most highly advanced in Dignity The Wives of the People managing all the Trade do enjoy a perfect Liberty Those of the Nobles are very reserved and stir not abroad but seldom either upon some Family visit or to go to the Pagodes But when they go out they go with their face uncovered even when they go on foot and sometimes it is hard to distinguish them from the Women-slaves which accompany them In a word they not only find nothing austere in the constraint under which they live but they place their glory therein They look upon a greater liberty as a shame and would think themselves slighted and contemned by a Husband that would permit it them They are jealous for them as much as they are themselves The Glory of the Asiatick Women There is not a vertuous Woman in Asia who in time of War chuses not rather that her Husband should kill her than that he should suffer her to fall under the power of the Enemies Tacitus in the Twelfth Book of his Annals gives an example thereof in Zenobia the wife of Rhadamistus The Husbands themselves do think it the most shameful thing in the world to them that their Wives should fall into the Enemies hands and when this happens the greatest affront that can be done them is not to restore them their Wives But tho the Women of Asia be capable of sacrificing their life to their glory there ceases not to be some amongst them who take secret pleasures when they can and who hazard their glory and their life upon this account 'T is reported that there have been some examples hereof amongst the King of Siam's Wives How closely soever they be shut up they do sometimes find out a way to have Lovers Some have assur'd me that the ordinary method by which this Prince punishes them is first to submit them to a Horse accustomed I know not how to the love of Women and then to put them to death 'T is some years since he gave one to the Tygers and because these Animals spared her at the first he offered her a Pardon but this Woman was so unworthy as to refuse it and with so many affronts that the King looking upon her as distracted ordered again that she should dye They irritated the Tygers and they tore her in pieces in his presence It is not so certain that he puts the Lovers to death but at the least he causes them to be severely chastized The common opinion at Siam is that 't was a fault of this nature which caused the last disgrace of the late Barcalon elder Brother to the King of Siam's first Ambassadour to the King The King his Master caused him to be very severely bastinado'd and forbore to see him yet without taking away his Offices On the contrary he continued to make use of him during the six months that he survived the blows which he had received and he with his own hand prepared all the Remedies which the Barcalon took in his last sickness because no person dared to give him any for fear of being accused of the death of a man who appeared so dear to his Master Bernier relates some examples by which it appears that the Great Mogul does not always punish the Women of his Seraglio that offended in their duty nor the Men that are their Accomplices with death These Princes consider these sorts of Crimes like the others which may be committed against their Majesty unless any sentiment of Love renders them more sensible of Jealousie The Jealousie of the Siameses towards their Daughters The Siamese Lords are not less jealous of their Daughters than of their Wives and if any one commits a fault they sell her to a certain man who has a priviledge of prostituting them for Money in consideration of a Tribute which he pays the King 'T is said that he has six hundred all Daughters of Officers in esteem He likewise purchases Wives when the Husbands sell them being convicted of Infidelity Their respect towards Old Men. Disrespect towards Old Men is not less rare at Siam than at China Of the two Mandarins which came on board the Kings Ambassadours Ship to bring them the first Compliment from the King of Siam the younger tho the
second Ambassador whom we saw here Yet it happens also that in this Country they hang themselves in despair when they see themselves reduced from an high Employment to an extreme Poverty and to the six Months Service due to the Prince tho' this Fall be not shameful I have said in another place Others are included in the Punishments with the Criminals that a Father shares sometimes in the punishment of the Son as being bound to answer for the Education which he has given him At China an Officer answers for the Faults of all the persons of his Family because they pretend that he who knows not how to govern his own Family is not capable of any public Function The Fear therefore which particular persons have of seeing their Families turned out of the Employments which do make the Splendor and Support thereof renders them all wise as if they were all Magistrates In like manner at Siam and at China an Officer is punished for the Offences of another Officer that is subject to his Orders by reason that he is to watch over him that depends on him and that having power to correct him he ought to answer for his conduct Thus about three years since we saw at Siam for three days Oc-Pra-Simo-ho-sot by Nation a Brame who is now in the King of Siam's Council of State exposed to the Cangue with the head of a Malefactor which they had put to Death hung about his Neck without being accused of having had any other hand in the crime of him whose head was hung to his Neck than too great Negligence in watching over a Man that was subject to him After this 't is no wonder in my opinion that the Bastinado should be so frequent at Siam Sometimes there may be seen several Officers at the Cangue disposed in a Circle and in the midst of them will be the head of a man which they have put to death and this head will hang by several strings from the Neck of every one of these Officers The least pretence for a Crime is punished The worst is that the least appearance of guilt renders an action criminal To be accused is almost sufficient to be culpable An action in it self innocent becomes bad so soon as any one thinks to make a Crime thereof And from thence proceed the so frequent disgraces of the principal Officers They know not how for instance to reckon up all the Barcalons that the King of Siam has had since he reigned The Policy of the Kings of Siam cruel against all and against their own Brethren The Greatness of the Kings whose Authority is despotical is to exercise Power over all and over their own Brethren The Kings of Siam do maim them in several ways when they can they take away or debilitate their sight by fire they render them impotent by dislocation of Members or sottish by Drinks securing themselves and their Children against the Enterprizes of their Brethren only by rendring them incapable of reigning he that now reigns has not treated his better This Prince will not therefore envy our King the sweetness of being beloved by his Subjects and the Glory of being dreaded by his Enemies The Idea of a great King is not at Siam that he should render himself terrible to his Neighbours provided he be so to his Subjects The Government of Siam more burdensome to the Nobles than to the Populace Yet there is this Reflection to be made on this sort of Government that the Yoke thereof is less heavy if I may so say on the Populace than on the Nobles Ambition in this Country leads to Slavery Liberty and the other Enjoyments of Life are for the vulgar Conditions The more one is unknown to the Prince and the further from him the greater Ease he enjoys and for this reason the Employments of the Provinces are there considered as a Recompence of the Services done in the Palace How tempestuous the Ministry is at Siam The Ministry there is tempestuous not only thro the natural Inconstancy which may appear in the Prince's Mind but because that the ways are open for all persons to carry complaints to the Prince against his Ministers And though the Ministers and all the other Officers do employ all their artifices to render these ways of complaints ineffectual whereby one may attack them all yet all complaints are dangerous and sometimes it is the slightest which hurts and which subverts the best established favour These examples which very frequently happen do edifie the People and if the present King had not too far extended his exactions without any real necessity his Government would as much please the Populace as it is terrible to the Nobles The King of Siam's regards for his people Nevertheless he has had that regard for his People as not to augment his Duties on cultivated Lands and to lay no imposition on Corn and Fish to the end that what is necessary to Life might not be dear A moderation so much the more admirable as it seems that they ought not to expect any from a Prince educated in this Maxim that his Glory consists in not setting limits to his power and always in augmenting his Treasure The Inconveniences of this Government It renders the Prince wavering on his Throne But these Kings which are so absolutely the Masters of the Fortune and Life of their Subjects are so much the more wavering in the Throne They find not in any person or at most in a small number of Domesticks that Fidelity or Love which we have for our Kings The People which possess nothing in property and which do reckon only upon what they have buried in the ground as they have no solid establishment in their Country so they have no obligation thereto Being resolved to bear the same Yoke under any Prince whatever and having the assurance of not being able to bear a heavier they concern not themselves in the Fortune of their Prince and experience evinces that upon the least trouble they let the Crown go to whom Force or Policy will give it A Siamese a Chinese an Indian will easily die to exert a particular Hatred or to avoid a miserable Life or a too cruel Death but to die for their Prince and their Country is not a Vertue in their practice Amongst them are not found the powerful motives by which our People animate themselves to a vigorous Defence They have no Inheritance to lose and Liberty is oftentimes more burdensom to them than Servitude The Siameses which the King of Pegu has taken in war will live peaceable in Pegu at Twenty miles distant from the Frontiers of Siam and they will there cultivate the Lands which the King of Pegu has given them no remembrance of their Country making them to hate their new Servitude And it is the same of the Peguins which are in the Kingdom of Siam The Eastern Kings are looked upon as the
embrace it I have not heard what Mr. Gervaise reports that it is needful to have a permission in writing from Oc-ya Pra Sedet to be receiv'd a Talapoin I see not likewise how this could be practicable in the whole extent of the Kingdom and they have always assured me that it is free for every one to make himself a Talapoin and that if any one did oppose the reception of another into this Profession he would sin When any one therefore is to be admitted his Parents and his Friends accompany him to this Ceremony with Instruments and Dancers and they stop frequently by the way to see dancing During the Ceremony the Demandant and the Men that are of his Retinue do enter into the Temple where the Sancrat is but the Women the Instruments and the Dancers enter not therein I know not who shaves the Head the Eye-brows and the Beard of the Demandant or whether he shaves it not himself The Sancrat gives the Habit with his own hand and he cloaths himself therewith letting the secular Habit fall underneath when he has put on the other Mean while the Sancrat pronounces several Balie words and when the Ceremony is ended the new Talapoin goes to the Convent where he must remain and his Parents and Friends accompany him thither But from this time he must no more hear any Instrument nor behold any Dance Some days after the Parents do give an Entertainment to the Convent and they exhibit a great many Shows before the Temple which the Talapoins are prohibited to see Whether there are several degrees of Talapoins Mr. Gervaise distinguishes the Talapoins into Balouang Tchaou-cou and Pecou As for me I have always heard say that Balouang which the Siameses do write Pat-louang is only a Title of Respect The Siameses gave it to the Jesuits as we do give them the Title of Reverence In this Country I never heard speak of the word Picou but only of Tchaou-cou which I shall explain in the Sequel and which some have informed me to be the Siamese word which signifies Talapoin So that they say He is a Tchaou-cou and I would be Tchaou-cou to signifie he is a Talapoin and I would be a Talapoin Nevertheless as there may be some difference between the Sancrats and Talapoins which the persons whom I consulted knew not tho' otherwise expert it may well be that there is some likewise between the Talapoins themselves some of which might be Pat-louang and others Picou and that the general name of all might be Tchaou-cou I refer my self to Mr. Gervaise The Talapoinesses do call themselves Nang Tchii They are clad in white Of the Talapoinesses like the Tapacaou and are not esteemed altogether Religious A simple Superior sufficeth to give them the Habit as well as to the Nens And altho' they cannot have any carnal Commerce with Men yet are they not burnt upon this account as the Talapoins are which are surprized in a Fault with the Women They deliver them up to their Parents to bastinado them because that neither the Talapoins nor the Talapoinesses can strike any person CHAP. XIX Concerning the Doctrine of the Talapoins ALL the Indies are full of Talapoins Divers kinds of Talapoins in the Indies tho' they have not everywhere this Name and live not everywhere after the same manner Some marry and others strictly observe Celibacy Some eat Meat provided it is given them slain others never eat any Some do kill Animals others kill none at all and others do kill very rarely and for some Sacrifice Their Doctrine appears not more exactly the same in all places tho' the Foundation thereof be always the opinion of the Metempsychosis and their Worship is also various tho' it always refers to the dead It seems that they believe all Nature animated not only Men How they believe the whole animated Nature and what Idea they have of the Animation Beasts and Plants but the Heaven the Planets the Earth and the other Elements the Rivers the Mountains the Cities the Houses themselves And moreover as all Souls appear to them of the same Nature and indifferent to enter into all Bodies of what kind soever they be it seems that they have not the Idea of the Animation as we have They believe that the Soul is in the Body and that it rules the Body but it appears not that they believe like us that the Soul is physically united to the Body to make one with it So far are they from thinking that the natural Inclinations of Souls is to be in Bodies that they believe it is a Penance for them to extirpate their Sins by their Sufferings because that indeed there is no kind of Life which has not its Troubles The supreme Felicity of the Soul in their opinion is not to be obliged to animate any Body but to remain eternally in repose And the true Hell of the Soul is on the contrary according to them the perpetual necessity of animating Bodies and of passing from one to another by continual Transmigrations 'T is said that amongst the Talapoins there are some which boldly assert that they remember their past Transmigrations and these Testimonies do doubtless suffice to confirm the People in the Opinion of the Metempsychosis The Europeans have sometimes translated by the word Tutelar Genius the Souls which the Indians give to the Bodies which we esteem inanimate But these Genii are certainly in the Opinion of the Indians only real Souls which they suppose equally to animate all the Bodies wherein they are present but after a manner which corresponds not to the Physical Vnion of our Schools The Figure of the World according to their Doctrine is eternal What they think of the Eternity of the World but the World which we see is not for whatever we see therein lives in their Opinion and must die and at the same time there will spring up other Beings of the same kind another Heaven another Earth and other Stars and this is the ground of what they say that they have seen Nature decay and revive again several times No Opinion has been so generally receiv'd amongst Men Of the nature of the Soul according to them as that of the Immortality of the Soul but that the Soul is immaterial is a Truth the knowledg of which is not so much propagated Thus is it a very great difficulty to give unto a Siamese the Idea of a pure Spirit and this is the Testimony which the Missionaries give thereof that have been longest amongst them All the Pagans of the East do believe indeed that there remains something of Man after his death which subsists separately and independantly from its body but they give extent and figure to what ramains and in a word they attribute unto it all the same Members and all the same solid and liquid Substances whereof our Bodies are composed They suppose only that the Souls are of a matter subtile
enough to be free from touch and sight tho' they believe that if any one be wounded the blood which flows from its wound may appear Such were the Manes and Shades of the Greeks and Romans and it is by this figure of the Souls like unto that of the Bodies that Virgil supposes that Aeneas knew Palinurus Dido and Anchises in Hell The Absurdity of their Opinion Now what is altogether impertinent in this Opinion is that the Orientals cannot tell why they attribute the humane Figure rather than any other to the Soul which they suppose able to animate all sorts of Bodies besides the humane Body When the Tartar which now reigns at China would force the Chineses to shave their hair after the Tartarian fashion several of them chose rather to suffer death than to go they said into the other World to appear before their Ancestors without hair imagining that they shaved the head of the Soul by shaving that of the Body Of the Punishments and Recompences of the Soul after death The Souls therefore tho' material are yet imperishable in their Opinion and at their departure out of this life they are punished or recompenced with Punishments or Pleasures proportioned in greatness and duration to their good or evil works until they re-enter into the humane Body wherein they must enjoy a Life more or less happy according to the Good or Evil they have committed in a former Life How they explain the Prosperity of the Wicked and the Misfortunes of the Good If a Man is unfortunate before he has done amiss as if he is dead-born the Indians believe that he has merited it in a former Life and that then perhaps he caused some Great-belly'd Woman to miscarry If on the contrary they observe a wicked Man to prosper they believe that he enjoys the Recompence which he has merited in another Life by good Actions If the Life of the Man is mixt with Prosperity and Adversity 't is because every Man they say has done Good and Evil when he formerly lived In a word no Person suffers any Misfortune according to their Opinion if he has always been innocent nor is he always happy if he has at any time been culpable nor does he enjoy any Prosperity which he has not merited by some good Action Of the several places where the Soul passes after death Besides the divers manners of being of this World as of Plant or of Animal to which the Souls are successively linked after death they reckon several places out of this World where the Souls are punished or rewarded Some are more happy and others more miserable than the World wherein we are They make all these places as Stages in the whole extent of Nature and their Books do vary in the number tho' the most common Opinion is that there are nine happy and as many unhappy The nine happy places are over our heads the nine unhappy are under our feet and the higher a place is the happier it is as also the lower it is the more unhappy it is so that the happy extend far above the Stars as the unhappy do sink a great way beneath the earth The Siameses do call the Inhabitants of the superior Worlds Theuada those of the inferior Worlds Pii and those of this World Manout The Portugueses have translated the word Theuada by that of Angels and the word Pii by that of Devils and they have given the Name of Paradice to the superior Worlds and that of Hell to the inferior It there revives again But the Siameses do not believe that the Souls in departing out of the Body do pass into these places as the Greeks and Romans thought that they went into Hell they are born according to them at the places where they go and there they do live a life which from us is conceal'd but which is subject to the infirmities of this and unto death Death and a new Birth are always the road from one of these places to another and it is not till after having lived in a certain number of places and during a certain time which ordinarily extends to some thousands of years that the Souls there punished or recompenced do happen to spring up again in the World wherein we are Now as they suppose that the Souls have a new habitation in the places where they revive they think they stand in need of the things of this Life To live a life full of Cares like this and all the ancient Paganism believed the same With the body of a dead man the Gauls burnt the things which he had most esteemed during his Life Moveables Animals Slaves and even free Persons if he had any singularly devoted to his Service They still practice worse than this if it is possible Why the Indian women burn themselvs with the body of their Husband among the Pagans of the true India where the Wife glories in burning herself alive with the body of her Husband to meet his Soul in the other world I well know that some presume that this Custom was formerly introduced in the Indies to secure the Husbands from the Treason of their Wives by forcing them to die with them Mandesh reports this opinion and Strabo had reported it before him and had disapproved it thinking it improbable either that such a Law was established or that such a reason for establishing it was true Indeed besides that this Custom is extended to the Moveables and Animals things all innocent it is free in regard of the Women none of which dies after this manner if she desires it not and it has been received in too great a part of the Country to imagine that the Crimes of the Women have given occasion thereunto Wives to be Slaves or as Slaves to their Husbands are not either more dissatisfied with their Condition nor greater Enemies to their Husbands and they change no part of the Condition as to this regard by a second Marriage Thus it is observed that the Indian Women have always look'd upon the Liberty they have of dying with their Husbands not as a Punishment but as a Felicity which is offered them The Women Slaves do sometimes follow their Mistress to the Funeral Pile but voluntarily and without compulsion And moreover it is not a thing without precedent in the Indies that an Husband enamour'd with his Wife will burn himself with her in hopes of going to enjoy another Life with her Navarette reports it is a Custom of the Tartars This Custom is received among the Tartars and is not without example among the Chineses that when there dies one amongst them one of his Wives hangs herself to follow him into the other World but that the Tartar which reigned at China in 1668. abolished this Custom and he adds that though it be not common to the Chineses nor approved by Confucius yet it is not without example He relates one in his time of the
they gild them but the Wood of their Coffins is not so precious as at China because they are not so rich as the Chineses Out of a respect they place the Coffin on some high thing and generally on a Bedsted which hath feet and so long as the body is kept at the house whether to expect the Head of the Family if he is absent or to prepare the Funeral Solemnities they burn Perfumes and Tapers by the Coffin and every night the Talapoins come to sing in the Balie Language in the Chamber where it is exposed they do range themselves along the Walls They entertain them and give them some Money and what they sing are some moral Subjects upon Death with the Road to Heaven which they pretend to show to the Soul of the deceased Mean while the Family chuses a place in the Field How they burn the bodies there to carry and burn the body This place is generally a Spot near the Temple which the Deceased or some of his Ancestors had built or near some other Temple if there is none peculiar to the Family of the deceased This space is inclosed with a square inclosure made of Bambou with some kind of Architecture almost of the same work as the Arbours and Bowers of our Gardens and adorned with those Papers Painted or Gilded which they cut to represent the Houses Moveables and Domestic and Savage Animals In the middle of this Inclosure the Pile composed entirely or partly of Odoriferous wood as are the white or yellow Saunders and Lignum Aloes and this according to the Wealth and Dignity of the deceased But the greatest honor of the Funeral consists in erecting the Pile not in eagerly heaping up Wood but in great Scaffolds on which they do put Earth and then Wood. At the Burial of the late Queen who died seven or eight years ago the Scaffold was higher than ever was yet seen in this Country and a Machine was desired of the Europeans to raise the Coffin decently to that heighth When it is resolved to carry the Corps to the Pile which is always done in the Morning the Parents and Friends do carry it with the sound of a great many Instruments The Body marches first then the Family of the deceased The Train Men and Women all cloathed in White their Head covered with a White Vail and lamenting exceedingly and in fine the rest of the Friends and Relations If the Train can go all the way by water it is so done In very magnificent Funerals they carry great Machines of Bambou covered with painted and gilded Paper which represents not only Palaces Moveables Elephants and other common Animals but some hideous Monsters some of which resemble the humane Figure and which the Christians take for the Figures of Devils They burn not the Coffin but they take out the body which they leave on the Pile and the Talapoins of the Convent near which the body is burnt do sing for a quarter of an hour and then retire to appear no more Then begin the shows of the Cone and of the Rabam which are at the same time and all the day long but on different Theaters The Talapoins think not that they can be present thereat without Sin and these Shows are not exhibited at Funerals upon any religious Account but only to render them more magnificent To the Ceremony they add a festival Air and yet the Relations of the deceased forbear not to make great Lamentations and to shed many Tears but they hire no Mourners as some have assured me About Noon the Tapacaou or Servant of the Talapoins sets fire to the Pile The Servant of the Talapoins lights the Funeral Pile which generally burns for two hours The Fire never consumes the body it only roasts it and oftentimes very ill but it is always reputed for the Honor of the deceased that he has been wholly consumed in an eminent place and that there remains only his Ashes If it is the Body of a Prince of the Blood or of a Lord whom the King has loved the King himself sets fire to the Pile without stirring out of his Palace He le ts go a lighted Torch along a Rope which is extended from one of the Windows of the Palace to the Pile As to the cut Papers which are naturally designed for the Flames the Talapoins do frequently secure them and seize them to lend them to other Funerals and the Family of the deceased permits them to do it In which it appears that they have forgot the reason why the neighbouring Nations dispence not from burning such Papers effectually and in general it may be asserted that there are no Persons in the world which do ignore their own Religion so much as the Talapoins It is very difficult say some to find any one amongst them that knows any thing It is necessary to seek their Opinions in the Balie Books which they keep and which they study very little Alms at Funerals The Family of the deceased entertains the Train and for three days it bestows Alms viz. On the day that the body is burnt to the Talapoins which have sung over the body the next day to their whole Convent and the third day to their Temple Funerals redoubled This is what is practised at the Funerals of the Siameses to which it is requisite only to add that they imbellish the Show with a great many Fire-works and that if the Funerals are for a man of great consequence they last with the same Shows for three days Bodies dug up to receive greater Funeral Honors It sometimes also happens that a Person of great Quality causes the body of his Father to be digged up again though a long time dead to make him a pompous Funeral if when he died they made him not such a one as was worthy of the present Elevation of the Son This participates of the Customs of the Chineses who communicate as much as they can to their dead Relations the Honors to which they arrive Thus when a man not born a Kings Son arrives at the Crown of China he will with certain Ceremonies cause the Title of King to be given to his deceased Father What the fire consumes not is buried under Pyramids and how the Siameses do call these Pyramids After the body of a Siamese has been burnt as I have said the whole Show is ended they shut up the remains of his Body in the Coffin without any Order and this depositum is laid under one of those Pyramids wherewith they encompass their Temples Sometimes also they bury precious Stones and other Riches with the body because that it is to put them in a place which Religion renders inviolable Some there are who say that they cast the Ashes of their Kings into the River and I have read of the Peguins that they make a Paste of the Ashes of their Kings with Milk and that they bury it at the
Indians have added to these Errors The Indians do now believe like the ancient Chineses some Souls as well good as bad diffused every where to which they have distributed the Divine Omnipotence And there is yet found some remains of this very Opinion amongst the Indians which have embraced Mahumetanism But by a new Error the Pagans of the Indies have thought all these Souls of the same nature and they have made them all to rowl from one body to another The Spirit of the Heaven of the ancient Chineses had some Air of Divinity It was I think immortal and not subject to wax old and to die and to leave its place to a Successor but in the Indian Doctrine of the Metempsychosis the Souls are fixed no where and succeeding one another every where they are not one better than another by their nature they are only designed to higher or lower functions in Nature according to the merit of their work Why the Indians have consecrated no Temple to the Spirits not even to that of Heaven The Antient Chineses have divided the Justice of God The Justice of Heaven was principally busied in punishing the Faults of the Kings of China Thus the Indians have consecrated no Temples to the Spirits not so much as to that of Heaven because they believe them all Souls like all the rest which are still in the course of Transmigration that is to say in Sin and in the Torments of different sorts of life and consequently unworthy of having Altars But if the ancient Chineses have as I may say reduc'd the Providence and Omnipotence of God into piece-meals they have not less divided his Justice They assert that the Spirits like concealed Ministers were principally busied in punishing the hidden faults of men that the Spirit of Heaven punished the faults of the King the Ministring Spirits of Heaven the faults of the King's Ministers and so of other Spirits in regard of other men On this Foundation they said to their King that though he was the adoptive Son of Heaven yet the Heaven would not have any regard to him by any sort of Affliction but by the sole consideration of the good or evil that he should do in the Government of his Kingdom They called the Chinese Empire the Celestial Command because said they a King of China ought to govern his State as Heaven governed Nature and that it was to Heaven that he ought to seek the Science of Governing They acknowledged that not only the Art of Ruling was a Present from Heaven but that Regality it self was given by Heaven and that it was a present difficult to keep because that they supposed that Kings could not maintain themselves on the Throne without the savour of Heaven nor please Heaven but by Vertue How they believe their Kings responsable to Heaven for the manners of their Subjects They carried this Doctrine so far that they pretended that the sole Vertue of Kings might render their Subjects Vertuous and that thereby the Kings were first responsible to Heaven for the wicked manners of their Kingdom The Vertue of Kings that is to say the Art of Ruling according to the Laws of China was in their Opinion a Donative from Heaven which they called Celestial Reason or Reason given by Heaven and like to that of Heaven The Vertue of Subjects according to them the regards of the Citizens as well from one to another as from all towards their Prince according to the Laws of China was the work of good Kings 'T is a small matter said they to punish Crimes it is necessary that a King prevents them by his Vertue They extoll one of their Kings for having reigned Twenty two years the People not perceiving that is to say not feeling the weight of the Royal Authority no more than the force which moves Nature and which they attribute to Heaven They report then that for these Twenty two years there was not one single Process in all China nor one single Execution of Justice a Wonder which they call to govern imperceptably like the Heaven and which alone may cause a doubt of the Fidelity of their History Another of their Kings meeting as they say a Criminal which was lead to Punishment took it upon himself for that under his Reign he committed Crimes worthy of Death And another seeing China afflicted with Sterility for seven years condemned himself if their History may be credited to bear the Crimes of his People as thinking himself only culpable and resolved to devote himself to death and to sacrifice himself to the Spirit of Heaven the Revenger of the Crimes of Kings But their History adds that Heaven satisfied with the Piety of that Prince exempted him from that Sacrifice and restored Fertility to the Lands by a sudden and plentiful Rain As the Heaven therefore executes Justice only upon the King and that it inflicts it only upon the King for what it sees punishable in the People the Ministers of Heaven do execute Justice on the secret Faults which the King's Ministers commit and all the Officers which depend upon them and after the same manner the other Spirits do watch over the Actions of the Men that in the Kingdom of China have a rank equal to that which these Spirits do possess in the invincible Monarchy of Nature whereof the Spirit of Heaven is King Besides this the natural Honor which most men have of the dead The Chineses fear their dead Parents whom they knew very well in their Life-time and the Opinion which several have of having seen them appear to them whether by an effect of this natural Honor which represents them to them or by Dreams so lively that they resemble the Truth do induce the ancient Chineses to believe that the Souls of their Ancestors which they judged to be of very subtile matter pleased themselves in continuing about their Posterity and that they might though after their death chastise the Faults of their Children The Chinese People still continue in these opinions of the temporal Punishments and Rewards which come from the Soul of Heaven and from all the other Souls though moreover for the greatest part they have embraced the Opinion of the Metempsychosis unknown to their Ancestors But by little and little the Men of Letters that is to say The Impiety of the present Chineses which are men of Learning those that have some degrees of Literature and who alone have a Hand in the Government being become altogether impious and yet having altered nothing in the Language of their Predecessors have made of the Soul of Heaven and of all the other Souls I know not what aerial substances uuprovided of Intelligence and for the Judge of our Works they have established a blind Fatality which in their opinion makes that which might exercise an Omnipotent and Illuminated Justice How ancient this Impiety is at China belongs not to me to determin Father de Rhodes in his