History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v2.c31.28.3

v2.c31.28.3

8 are employed by the Baudhāyana-Pitṛmedhasūtra¹⁴⁵³ in the funeral rites, the first to be repeated when the wife is made to sit near the corpse and the next for making her rise. It is to be noted that Baud. directs that the corpse is placed on the funeral pile after the wife is made to rise from the vicinity of the corpse; while the Bṛhad-devatā appears to suggest that the wife ascends the funeral pile after the corpse is placed thereon and then the younger brother forbids her with the verse 'udīrṣva &c.'. But the Bṛhad-devatā¹⁴⁵⁴ does not mean that the wife burns herself on the funeral pyre and the brother-in-law contents himself with only repeating a verse to dissuade her. The Ṛgvidhāna¹⁴⁵⁵ (III. 8. 4) says that the brother-in-law should call back the wife of his sonless brother when she is about to ascend the funeral pyre for procreating a son on her with Ṛg. X. 18. 8. It appears that the verse Ṛg X. 18. 8 symbolically describes what even in the days of the Ṛgveda was probably only a tradition viz. that in hoary antiquity a wife burnt herself with her husband. In the times of the Ṛgveda this practice had altogether ceased, but a symbolical imitation of it had come into vogue, viz. that the wife lay near the corpse in the cemetery and then she was asked to get up and was told that by following her husband to the very doors of death she had fulfilled all that was expected of her and that she should return.