Hindu Law and Custom (Recht und Sitte) c11.44

c11.44

§ 58. Funeral ceremony and impurity. The funeral rites or the obsequies (antyeṣṭi), are not reckoned by Gaut. 8,14 ff. etc. among the sacraments but they belong to the ceremonies in which Vedic Mantras are recited (M. 2, 16), and these Mantras are mostly taken from Vedic funeral hymns, but neither these nor the data in the Gṛhyasūtras will be exhaustibly dealt with here¹. The Antyeṣṭi, in contradistinction to the Śrāddha which brings happiness (maṅgala), is considered to be evil-bringing² (amaṅgala), and this may be the reason that the Smṛtis have so little to do with it. According to Vi. 19 and Y. 3 1-18 the procedure of the funeral ceremony is as follows. The mourning train of the relations, arranged according to age (Mit.), brings the corpse to the burning place (śmaśāna). Arriving there they burn the corpse to the accompaniment of the recital of texts appropriate for the ceremony. Then they turn round the pile of woods from left to right, that is to say, by turning their left side to it. Then follow a purificatory bath (cf. Āp. 2, 15, 10; Baudh. 1, 11, 23 etc.), inasmuch as they go into water with clothes on, and an offering of water is given for the deceased, invoking him by name; a Piṇḍa too is offered to him on kuśa grass. Then they rise out of the water and sitting on a grass plot hear a sermon about the transitoriness of human life. Then the train of mourners go back home, the children this time leading; they halt at the door once more in order to chew Nimba leaves, sip water, tread on a stone etc. and step slowly into the house only after finishing this ceremony. So long as the impurity caused by the death lasts sacrifices have to be daily performed for the deceased, inasmuch as an offering of water and a Piṇḍa are given to him, vessels with milk and water are hung by a rope for him, etc. On the fourth day after the cremation the bones are collected and thrown into the Ganges. Children under two years of age are not however cremated but buried. Later works mention many other ceremonies¹, the chief aim of which is to lend arms, legs etc., and finally the head, to the spirit of the dead (preta) by means of the Piṇḍas offered to it, so that it is transformed into a "father" (pitṛ) and is then fit to be received into the Śrāddha.