Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c14.4.4

v2.c14.4.4

With the Indian doctrine that punishment atones, blots out any guilt and reproach, is probably connected on the other hand the teaching of the old verse which I quoted in that note to the Daçakum., and which, for instance, is also found in Vasistha, xix, 45; Manu, viii, 318; Nārada, Pariçishta, 48: The criminal punished by the king goes without a spot into heaven, like the pious man. Cp. my *Hindu Tales*, pp. 9-10 (note). In Sicily, too, as I point out in the Daçakum., executed criminals are prayed to and worshipped. Cp. Hartland, "The Cult of Executed Criminals at Palermo," *Folk-Lore*, vol. 21, p. 168 ff.; vol. 7, p. 275; *Primitive Paternity*, i, 77. And in general anyone meeting his end by violence is outside the course of nature, and becomes a god, an evil spirit, etc. "There is a deified Pootra in every Rajput family—one who has met with a violent death." Tod, *Rajasthan*, i, 298, note; cp. 659-60; Hartland, i, 77; *Zschr. d. Ver. f. Volksk.*, Bd. 2, p. 185; *Zschr. f. Religwissensch*, Bd. 8, p. 258. Much valuable information is given especially by Crooke, *Pop. Rel.*, i, 43, 44, 46, 62, 96, 99, 115, 119 129, 138 ff., 147, 189 ff., 230 f., 234 ff.; Crooke, *The North-Western Provinces*, 252. Here we find included the suicide, who in the law writing, the Purānas, and elsewhere is branded as evil;