The Religion of the Veda: The Ancient Religion of India (from Rig-Veda to Upanishads) c11.5

c11.5

Underneath the coat of sugar the pill of death is bitter after all. Fitfully the Vedic Hindu regales himself with the hope of paradise, but his real craving is expressed in Vedic literature countless times: "May we live a hundred autumns, surrounded by lusty sons!" On the way to Yama the dead must pass the two broad-nosed, four-eyed dogs, the speckled and the dark; according to another turn of this myth these same dogs, originally sun and moon,¹ wander among men and pick the daily candidates that are to go on their last pilgrimage. Soon we hear of the foot-snare of Yama. Think or do what you will, death remains uncanny. The prospect of paradise is marred to some extent by visions of hell, the inevitable analogical opposite of paradise, that deep place of bottomless, blind darkness, which in a later time is fitted out with the usual gruesome stage-setting in the style of Dante's *Inferno*, or the wall-paintings in the Campo Santo at Pisa.