CHAPTER  Vm.

ON   THE   DIFFERENT   CLASSES   OF   CREATED   BEINGS,   AND
ON   THEIR   NAMES.

The subiect of this chapter is very difficult to study and The various

classes of

understand accurately, since we Muslims look at it from creatures

•  1                  -,     ,       TT-    T         1             IT                     1    •         J   according to

Without, and the Hindus themselves do network it out sdmkhya.
to scientific perfection. As we, however, want it for
the further progress of this treatise, we shall communi¬
cate all we have heard of it until the date of the present
book. And first we give an extract from the book
Sdriikhya.

" The anchorite spoke: ' How many classes and species
are there of living bodies ? '

" The sage replied : ' There are three classes of them—
the spiritual ones in the height, men in the middle, and
animals in the depth. Their species are fourteen in
number, eight of which belong to the spiritual beings :
Brahman, Indra, Prajapati, Saumya, Gandharva, Yak-
sha, Rakshasa, and Pisaca. Five species are those of
the animals—cattle, wild beasts, birds, creeping things,
and groiuing things, i.e. the trees. And, lastly, one
species is represented by man.'"

The author of the same book has in another part of
it given the following enumeration with different names:
" Brahman, Indra, Prajapati, Gandharva, Yaksha, Rak¬
shasa, Pitaras, Pisaca."

The Hindus are people who rarely preserve one and
the same order of things, and in their enumeration of
things there is much that is arbitrary.    They use or