Note 10 — Chapter VIII

The story of Eggidatta gives us an insight into one of the tenets which was held by that ascetic. His interlocutor reproached him with worshipping mountains, trees, forests, rivers, and the heavenly bodies. From the expressions made use of by the Burmese translator, the writer is inclined to believe that a direct allusion is made to pantheistic opinions. We know that most of the Indian schools of philosophy have based their various systems of metaphysics upon that most erroneous foundation. According to pantheists, this world is not distinct from the essence of God; all that exists is but a manifestation or a development of the substance of God. This world is not the work of God, existing as distinct from its Maker, but it is God manifesting Himself substantially in all things. Who could, then, wonder at the conduct of Tsampooka? He worshipped God, or rather that portion of the supreme Being he saw in the great and mighty subjects that surrounded him and attracted his notice.

Spinoza, in the seventeenth century, and his unfortunately too numerous followers in this century, have recast into a hundred different moulds the pantheistic ideas of the Hindu philosophers, and offer to the intelligence of their hearers and readers, through an almost unintelligible language, the same deadly food which has finally produced on the Hindu mind the sad results which we witness. If we were better acquainted with the variety of doctrines which the Hindu philosophers have exhibited in the field of metaphysics, we would be soon convinced that the modern metaphysicians, who have placed themselves out of the pale of revelation, have not advanced one step in that science, and that the divergence in their opinions is but a faithful representation of the confusion which for more than two thousand years prevailed on the banks of the Ganges among their predecessors in the same speculative studies.

It appears that Tsampooka was in his days what the Jogies or Hindoo penitents are up to our time. He remained on his rock, in the most difficult position, for the space of fifty-five years, exhibiting himself to the crowd, and aiming at winning their admiration by the incredible sufferings that he voluntarily submitted to. His apparent sanctity was made up of very doubtful materials. He passed himself off for a man who could remain without eating, and who was gifted with supernatural powers. Plain humility, which is nothing but the result of the true knowledge of self, was not the favourite virtue of our spiritual quack.