Ragnarok : the age of fire and gravel
386 CONCLUSIONS.
paradise. In his prayers the penitent inhis confession says to this day :
“T am wholly without doubt in the existence of the Mazdayagnian faith ; in the coming of the resurrection of the latter body ; in the stepping over the bridge Chinvat ; as well as in the continuance of paradise.” *
The bridge and the land are both indestructible.
Over the midst of the Moslem hell stretches the bridge Es-Sirat, “finer than a hair and sharper than the edge of a sword.”
In the Lyke-Wake Dirge of the English north-country, they sang of
“The Brig of Dread Na braider than a thread.”
In Borneo the passage for souls to heaven is across a long tree ; it is scarcely practicable to any except those who have killed a man,
In Burmah, among the Karens, they tie strings across the rivers, for the ghosts of the dead to pass over to their graves.
In Java, a bridge leads across the abyss to the dwellingplace of the gods; the evil-doers fall into the depths below.
Among the Esquimaux the soul crosses an awful gulf over a stretched rope, until it reaches the abode of “ the great female evil spirit below” (beyond ?) “the sea.”
The Ojibways cross to paradise on a great snake, which serves as a bridge.
The Choctaw bridge is a slippery pine-log.
The South American Manacicas cross on a wooden bridge.
Among many of the American tribes, the Milky Way is the bridge to the other world.
* Poor, “Sanskrit Literature,” p. 151.