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The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c34: Chapter 23. The Abodes of the Dead

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c34

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Contents

Chapter 23. The Abodes of the Dead

§ 1. The Nature of the Dead

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IT is not altogether easy to derive from the Rigveda a precise conception of the nature which was attributed to the spirits of the dead by the mind of the people or of the priest, and it is natural to assume that the ground for this difficulty is to be traced to the variation of both popular and ecclesiastical opinion. The modern view of the spirits and their abode is extremely varied and confused, and it would be ill-judged to assume that it was otherwise in the earlier Vedic religion.

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Long before the period of the Rigveda, it is clear that the Indian had realized the difference between life and death and had separated in his imagination the two elements of the man, his body and his spirit,¹ but the distinction must have been vague in the extreme.² Of the spirit as distinct from the body we have two expressions which occur frequently enough to let us believe that their meaning was more or less definitely known: of these the first was what we would regard as physical, but what doubtless seemed just as psychical to the Vedic India as any other aspect of the spirit: it is the *asu*,³ life, which seems clearly to have been based on the conception of the breath of the man, which is the visible sign of life and intellect: later, but not in the Rigveda, the term Ātman, the breath, is the most characteristic term for the self, and the breaths, Prāṇas, are a constant subject of investigation in the Upaniṣads, where often they appear as essentially representing the life and spirit of man. The identification of breath and the *asu* is made formally in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa,⁴ but this fact is of much less importance than the clear indications of the Rigveda. The other term is, unlike *asu*, which never in later times became an expression of any philosophical importance, one which never loses a place in the thought of India, though it does not achieve the rank of the Ātman. It is Manas, the mind, which in later Indian thought is of importance as the means of knowledge of all internal events,¹ and a necessary link in the knowledge of external events *en route* from the senses. The conception of the Rigveda is seen clearly in the case² when the mind of a senseless person is said to have gone away to Yama, the lord of the dead, to sky and earth, to the sea and the mountains, to the sun and the dawn. It is also probable that the conception later prevalent that the mind has its abode in the heart was already developed:³ the connexion of mind and heart is not rare in the Rigveda. The further view that the mind had the dimensions of a pigmy or a thumb in size, which is found said of the Puruṣa as the principle of life in the Upaniṣads and often later, is not to be proved for the period of the Rigveda.⁴

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¹ Passages like RV. x. 16. 3; AB. ii. 6. 13 clearly do not imply ignorance of this fact, which is clearly revealed in many passages, e. g. RV. x. 14. 8; 16. 5. The idea of many souls in the individual appears in philosophical form in the doctrines of sheaths of the soul in TU. ii. 4. Cf. Hopkins, *Origin of Religion*, pp. 109 ff.

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² This is illustrated in detail in Tuxen's *Forestillingen om Sjælen i Rigveda*, but is notorious, see Hopkins, *Origin of Religion*, p. 112.

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³ RV. i. 113. 16; 140. 8; Oldenberg, *Rel. des Veda*², pp. 525, 526; for Avestan, *aṅhu*, Geiger, *Ostīran. Kultur*, p. 290.

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⁴ vi. 6. 2. 6; ii. 4. 2. 21.

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¹ C. Rhys Davids, *Buddhist Manual of Psychological Ethics*², pp. lxxxv ff.; Keith, *Indian Logic and Atomism*, pp. 243-7.

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² x. 58; cf. Feist, *Kultur der Indogermanen*, p. 323.

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³ RV. viii. 100. 5. For the later view see AV. vi. 18. 3; AGS. iii. 6. 8; Windisch, BSGW. 1891, pp. 163 ff.; C. Rhys Davids, *Buddhist Manual of Psychological Ethics*², pp. lxxxvi ff.

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⁴ Oldenberg, *Rel. des Veda*², p. 525; cf. BAU. iv. 3. 14; Kaṭha Up. iv. 12.

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Naturally enough there is abundant evidence of the simple views which suggest the theory of the spirit: the phenomena of loss of the senses, which is recorded in the Rigveda, is also recorded of the ancient Bhṛgu, who in this condition went to the other world and had experiences of interest there.⁵ The view that in the case of a dream the soul might be outside the body and moving about freely at will, which is a common belief of many peoples, is proved by the reference to such a case in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa,⁶ which warns us of the danger of waking the sleeper too hurriedly, lest the soul should thus fail to find its way back into the body. It appears also that dreams about the dead were deemed to be due to the souls of the dead moving thus about. At least this belief would explain the fact that, on going away from a festival for the dead, the partaker in the rite should rub himself with the Apāmārga plant and ask it to wipe away evil dreams.⁷ The danger of the spirit escaping through yawning seems suggested by the rule that in such a case one should say, ‘In me be strength and wisdom’.⁸ The shadow also is here and there found as being in some way connected with man: if one cannot see his reflection it is an omen of death, and the reflection of one whose mind is gone can be used in a spell to restore his mind to him.⁹ All these elements can be supposed to have been steadily at work in Vedic India, and the result is the conception of the spirit as some more or less impalpable substance. It is not *asu* entirely nor mind: it is also breath, and it is very often regarded as *asu* and mind :¹ or it appears as mind or as *asu*, as in the frequent phrase *asunīti*, ‘*asu* leading’,² which is applied both to the process by which the spirits are led from the earth to their home in the sky, and the reverse process by which they are brought back by Agni, as the conveyer of souls, from the heaven in which they live to the offerings made to them on earth. It is, however, of importance that mind is assumed to be with the spirit when it is away from the body : the Fathers of the Vedic creation are thus creatures who are perfectly gifted for intellectual action of all kind, to know, to perceive, to enjoy, and to will. But the view as to exactly what it was which departed at death was never quite clearly settled by the thought of India : the Upaniṣads inclined to regard it as the Ātman, the Buddhist in one view as consciousness, Vijñāna,³ and later there developed more precise views of the psychic apparatus which transmigrated, but the views of the populace were probably as vague as those of Vedic India itself.

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⁵ Oertel, JAOS. xv. 234. On the legend of Subandhu's loss of soul and its recovery see JB. iii. 168-70; PB. xii. 12. 5; Oertel, JAOS. xviii. 41; Macdonell and Keith, *Vedic Index*, i. 47; RV. x. 57-60.

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⁶ xiv. 7. 1. 12.

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⁷ ÇB. xiii. 8. 4. 4.

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⁸ TS. ii. 5. 2. 4; cf. Pease, CP. xi. 429-44.

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⁹ TS. vi. 6. 7. 2; HGS. i. 11. 6. For the shadow see also LÇS. iii. 3. 6; ĀÇS. v. 19. 5; ĀpÇS. xiii. 14. 3; AV. xiii. 1. 56 (v. 19. 9 is wrongly so interpreted by Brunnhofer, *Arische Urzeit*, pp. 258 ff.); Frazer, *Taboo*, pp. 77 ff.; von Negelein, *Archiv f. Religionswissenschaft*, v. 18 ff.

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¹ AV. viii. 1. 1, 15; 2. 26; v. 30. 1; viii. 1. 7; 2. 3.

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² RV. x. 15. 14; 16. 2.

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³ Oldenberg, *Buddha*⁶, p. 308. For the Ātman in the Saṁjñāna, see ÇB. xiv. 7. 2. 3; BAU. iv. 4. 2. Strictly speaking the aggregate of the Skandhas is the transmigrating element; Windisch, *Buddha's Geburt*, pp. 37 ff.; Keith, *Buddhist Philosophy*, pp. 6 ff.

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But it would be an error to assume that the body was left for ever at death : this might seem to be the logical view, but it is not the view of the Vedic Indian, as it has not been the view of many different classes of men. The care expressed in the Rigveda⁴ itself for the avoidance of injury to the body of the dead, which was to be burned, by a bird or other beast, is confirmed by the express injunction to the dead that he has in the next world to unite himself with his body. The same idea is expressed in the Atharvaveda,⁵ which treats as in the next world the body, the *asu*, the mind, the limbs, and the sap all uninjured, and the Fathers are entreated to secure that the bones which have been placed out of order shall all be placed in due arrangement. This unquestionably is the regular view in the Veda : the alternative view once found in the Rigveda,⁶ which sends the eye of the dead to the sun, the breath to the wind, bids him go to the heaven and the earth, or if he prefers to the waters, and to dwell among the plants with his members, cannot be treated as more than a mere deviation of no great consequence for the general view of Vedic religion. The connexion of the eye and the sun is also seen in the Puruṣasūkta, where the sacrifice of the primeval giant results in the sun being created from his eye. The concrete character of the entity which is left in the heaven is proved by the fact that the Fathers are always addressed, when mentioned individually, by their own names : there is no such thing as an invocation of the spirit of any individual. He himself continues his life.

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⁴ x. 16. 6; 14. 8; 16. 5. Hauer's reference (*Die Anfänge der Yogapraxis im alten Indien*, pp. 97, 108) of x. 16 to an initiatory ceremony is impossible.

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⁵ xiv. 2. 24.

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⁶ x. 16. 3. So of the victim, AB. ii. 6. 13.

§ 2. The Places of the Dead

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The chief place of the dead in the conception of the Rigveda¹ is unquestionably heaven: the soul leaves the body on death, and by the path of the Fathers it goes to the place where there is eternal light, endowed with lustre like that of the gods.² It is said to go as by a car or by wings:³ more completely the Atharvaveda⁴ pictures the dead man as borne up by the Maruts, with gentle breezes fanning him, and cooled by showers until he recovers his complete body, and meets with the Fathers in the highest heaven, where with Yama they dwell. The heaven is called also the home,⁵ but the idea can hardly be pressed to the view that the going to heaven is a return home: it is rather that the man reaches in the highest heaven a new and abiding abode. The connexion of this journey of the souls with the actual burning of the body is always a vague one, but the reality of the connexion of soul and body is proved by the emphasis laid in the Brāhmaṇas⁶ on the necessity for the due collection of the bones of the dead, and the need of replacing them symbolically in cases where they may happen to be lost.

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¹ ix. 113. 7 ff. is the fullest description.

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² AV. xi. 1. 37.

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³ AV. iv. 34. 4; VS. xviii. 52.

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⁴ xviii. 2. 21–6.

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⁵ RV. x. 14. 8.

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⁶ ÇB. xi. 6. 3. 11; xiv. 6. 9. 28.

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Another conception of the nature of death is hinted at in the legend of the dogs of Yama,⁷ the four-eyed, a term probably derived from the presence of some mark on the dog which gave the appearance of four eyes,⁸ brindled, broad-nosed, dogs which wander about and guard the path or sit on it: the spirit is bidden to haste past the dogs, and to join the Fathers with Yama. Delighting in lives, they watch men and serve as messengers of Yama, and are entreated to grant continued enjoyment of life. It is possible that they were conceived as going among men, and taking to the abode of death the souls of the dead. The Avestan parallel is one dog, which four-eyed and yellow-eared watches the head of the Cinvaṭ bridge⁹ which reaches from this to the next world, and by his barking scares away the fiends, who would hinder the passing of the souls of the just dead. In the Rigveda there is no clear evidence to any such functions of the dogs as the dividers out of souls as good or bad: the suggestion of Roth¹⁰ and Aufrecht that this was their function is based on interpretations, which are not very probable, and at any rate are uncertain. In the Atharvaveda¹¹ the messengers of Yama appear already as plural as well as dual. Any possibility of holding that they had duties of discrimination would of course disappear if they were to be regarded as being really the sun and the moon, as is argued by Bloomfield (the day and the night in the Jaiminīya Brāhmaṇa),¹ or the doubles of Yama and Yamī, which was the view of Bergaigne,² but it is difficult to go beyond the view that the imagination of the Indo-Iranians and, if the identification—doubtful in the extreme—of Çabala and Kerberos³ is to be accepted, probably of the Indo-Europeans also, believed that the way to the sky was guarded or infested by a dog or dogs.

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⁷ RV. x. 14. 10–12; AV. xviii. 2. 12; viii. 1. 9; JB. i. 6 (Çabala and Çyāma).

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⁸ Cf. Hommel, *Festschrift Kuhn*, p. 422.

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⁹ No bridge exists in the RV. (ix. 41. 2 is not a reference to this) nor is there a river (x. 63. 10): Scherman, *Visionslitteratur*, pp. 110, 111. For the Avesta see Moulton, *Early Zoroastrianism*, pp. 165, 333, n. 4. Later the soul of the bull slain by Mithra is guarded by his hound on its ascent to heaven, with which the dog of the horse sacrifice may be compared.

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¹⁰ Based on RV. vii. 55. 2–5; Aufrecht, *Ind. Stud.* iv. 341; Weber, xviii. 20; Oldenberg, *Ṛgveda-Noten*, ii. 42. Bloomfield also (on AV. iv. 5) rejects this view.

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¹¹ viii. 2. 11; 8. 11; v. 30. 6.

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¹ *JAOS.* xv. 163 ff.; *Cerberus, the dog of Hades* (1905); Hillebrandt, *Ved. Myth.*, p. 155.

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² *Rel. Véd.* i. 93. Arbman (*Rudra*, pp. 258 ff.) makes them refined versions of theriomorphic death demons. Cf. the alleged wolf of death in RV. ii. 29. 6 (Scherman, *Visionslitteratur*, p. 127). See Hopkins, *Origin of Religion*, p. 33, n. 1, and for German wolves who eat the dead, Helm, *Altgerm. Rel.* i. 209 ff.

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³ Rohde, *Psyche*, i. 280.

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The nature of the heaven which is attained by the spirits is described repeatedly in the Rigveda:⁴ it is further elaborated in the later Saṁhitās, but all its characteristics are the same: there is light, the sun for the highest waters, every form of happiness, the Svadhā, which is at once⁵ the food of the spirits, and the power which they win by it, their self-determination. The spirits are so material as not merely to enjoy the most material things, Soma, milk, honey, Surā, ghee, but also to delight in the joys of love,⁶ a fact indicating how corporeal was their nature. The sound of singing and the flute is also among the delights available, and there is a fig-tree where Yama drinks with the gods.⁷ There are wish-cows, which yield all desires, and there is perfect harmony and joy unbounded. The picture is singularly simple: it is merely the pleasant things of earth to the priestly imagination, heaped upon one another: the total absence of anything which could be regarded as natural in the heaven of warriors is a striking reminder that the conceptions of Vedic India, in so far as they are within reach of our knowledge, were the ideas of priests and not of the whole community. The idea thus presented prevailed throughout the Vedic periods: even in the Brāhmaṇas among speculations of various sorts, it is often said that men obtain unity with the sun, which clearly means that he goes to dwell in the heaven of the sun where are the Fathers, the gods, and above all Yama.

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⁴ RV. x. 14–16; 27. 21; 56. 1; 107. 2; 154. 5; i. 109. 7; 125. 6; AV. iv. 34. 2–6; xi. 4; iii. 29. 3; vi. 120. 3; MS. i. 10. 18; ii. 3. 9, &c.; ÇB. xi. 5. 6. 4; xiv. 7. 1. 32, 33; Kauṣ. i. 4. It is the highest of the heavens; RV. x. 14. 8; AV. xi. 4. 11; ix. 5. 1, 8; xviii. 2. 48; 4. 3; the sun, RV. x. 107. 2; 154. 5.

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⁵ RV. iv. 26. 4; Oldenberg, *Rel. des Veda*², p. 531, n. 3.

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⁶ AV. iv. 34. 2; TB. ii. 4. 6. 6; ÇB. x. 4. 4. 4; Kauṣ. i. 4. Their bodies are freed from all bodily defects; AV. iii. 28. 5; vi. 120. 3.

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⁷ RV. x. 135. 1; cf. AV. v. 4. 3. In Kauṣ. i. 3 it is called the Ilya or Ilpa tree, and we hear of the Vijarā stream, the Sālajya city, the Aparājita palace, &c., in the world of Brahman: cf. CU. viii. 5. 3. It is implausible to see any mythological importance in this tree, which seems merely the reflex of the tree of the Indian village, under which sit the elders. Cf. above, p. 172, n. 2.

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Yama it is whom, with Varuṇa, the new arrival in the realms of heaven sees. He is closely connected with Agni, and also with Mātariçvan: his is the third heaven, the other two being Savitṛ’s, and his is the highest,¹ the abode of the sun which he gives to men. He does so because he was the first of mortals who died, and who found out the way for many to the realm, where now he reigns rather than rules as king. In the later Saṁhitās² his connexion with death, which is his path already on the Rigveda,³ and with which he may even be identified there, is more and more emphasized: he is connected with Antaka, ‘the ender’, Mṛtyu, ‘death’, and Nirṛti, ‘dissolution’, and Mṛtyu is his messenger as well as his two, or more, dogs. But he is also the father of men with his sister Yamī, who bids him in a dialogue of much interest commit incest with her for the creation of the race, a view which Yama on moral grounds reprobates in the hymn.⁴ In the Avesta Yama is the king of a distant paradise on earth, the lord of a golden age where no heat or cold or defects exist. He has, though not in the Avesta, a sister Yimeh from whom with him men are sprung. It is tempting to see in him the king first of a golden age, and then of a realm of the spirits of the heroes of that age, the Ṛṣis mentioned with him as makers of the way to the world to come, as Oldenberg suggests, but the evidence hardly avails to establish this. For India and Iran, however, he is beyond doubt the first of mortals, and therefore also the first to die. The view that he is more than that, a faded divinity, whether Agni as held by Bergaigne,⁵ or the sun, as Barth⁶ thought, or, as Weber⁷ suggested, the parting day, Yamī being then night in whose gloom may be seen sorrow for Yama, or the setting sun and so the lord of the dead, as taken by Max Müller,⁸ is not necessary and is not supported by any decisive evidence: still less plausible is the effort of Hillebrandt⁹ to find in him the moon as the mortal child of the sun, even if as he holds this conception was indeed Indo-Iranian, but no longer a living belief in Vedic times. The effort¹⁰ to remove Yamī from the tradition and to see in Yama the *alter ego* of the living man, his soul, is clearly contrary to the whole of the Vedic and the Avestan evidence.

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¹ RV. i. 35. 6; x. 135. 7; VS. xii. 63.

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² MS. ii. 5. 6; VS. xxxix. 13; AV. v. 30. 12; xviii. 2. 27; v. 24. 13 (lord of Manes). Arbman (*Rudra*, p. 306, n. 2) seeks to prove that Yama is idealized in the RV. but wrongly; in TS. iii. 3. 8. 3, there is no distinction between hell and heaven, and Yama is lord of earth (TS. iii. 4. 5; v. 2. 3. 1) as first of men. TA. iv. 37 and ÇB. xi. 6. 1. 1 ff. prove nothing for his original nature. His is clearly a case of syncretism of different views of death. Cf. Rhys, *Celtic Heathendom*, pp. 654 ff.

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³ i. 38. 5; 165. 4.

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⁴ Oldenberg, *Rel. des Veda*², p. 533; cf. Moulton, *Early Zoroastrianism*, pp. 144 ff. To distinguish two Yamas (Hillebrandt, *Ved. Myth.*, p. 155) is quite impossible.

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⁵ *Rel. Véd.* i. 89.

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⁶ *Rel. of Ind.*, pp. 22, 23.

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⁷ *Ved. Beitr.*, 1894, pp. 1 ff. For Yama as a man, see Bloomfield, *Rel. of Veda*, p. 105.

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⁸ *Anthr. Rel.*, pp. 297, 298; Ehni, *Yama*, p. 8; Carnoy, JAOS. xxxvi. 317.

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⁹ *Ved. Myth.* i. 394 ff.; (Kl. Ausg.), pp. 151 ff.

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¹⁰ *Indog. Myth.* i. 229 ff. See also below, Appendix B.

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Yama, however, and Varuṇa also do not appear as active in the work of controlling the world of the dead: as the great god, Varuṇa’s place is there, perhaps too as the god to whom cries proceed for pardon from sin, but neither god is said to punish the dead or judge them for their sins. The idea of judgement of any sort is foreign to the Rigveda as to early Iran, and it is only in the Taittirīya Āraṇyaka¹ that we have the express statement that the truthful and the untruthful are separated before Yama, but his activity in this separation is in no wise indicated, and the idea of the weighing of the deeds of man on his arrival in the other world, which is prominent in the Avesta, is only found in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa² in a passage of speculative activity. What the dead obtain in heaven is not only long life there by the gift of the mercy of the gods: they obtain the merit of the Iṣṭāpūrta, the sacrifices which they have offered, and the gifts which they have given to the priest,³ and at the same time they are nourished by the piety of their relatives on earth, as they have nourished in their turn their forefathers. Such nourishment may be either buried with them, when the grains of corn and sesame will become wish-cows and their calves in the heaven, or may be conveyed by the later offerings.⁴ It is not a very distant step to the idea of the Buddhists⁵ that souls which are miserable can be aided by the gift to monks in their name, and the assignment to them of the merit thus acquired.

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¹ vi. 5. 13. The references in the RV. are not probable (Scherman, *Visionslitteratur*, pp. 152, 153), despite x. 12. 8. The royal assessors of Yama (AV. iii. 29. 1) are merely transferred from human relations as receivers of tribute from the good deeds of the dead, as kings on earth from their subjects’ goods. Yama as the hare in the moon appears in JB. i. 28, but merely because the moon is the abode of the dead.

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² xi. 2. 7. 33; cf. xii. 9. 1. 1, and for separation by fire, i. 9. 3. 2.

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³ RV. x. 14. 8.

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⁴ AV. xviii. 4. 32 ff.; iv. 34; Kauç. lxvi. 6.

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⁵ Cf. B. C. Law, *The Buddhist Conception of Spirits*. Kauṣ. i. 4 recognizes the transfer to relatives and foes respectively of a man’s good and evil deeds on death.

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The other side of the belief in heaven is the belief in hell. It is of course in itself perfectly possible that the Vedic Indian might not have believed in the existence of hell: the view that annihilation might be the fate of the souls which did not receive the boon of immortal life from the gods is not in itself absurd, but a hell is a natural complement to heaven, and in point of fact the Rigveda⁶ itself seems to contain references to a place of punishment, into which Indra and Soma are to hurl the evil doers so that not one can emerge; under the three earths is the place of the enemy and robber, and the demoness is to disappear in endless abysses. There occurs here and in a few other places the idea of the eternal punishment in a place of deep darkness of the evil.⁷ The idea of hell is made clear by the Atharvaveda⁸ which has the word Naraka Loka in contrast to Svarga, heaven, as the place for female goblins and sorceresses: it is also the place of the murderer,⁹ and appears as black, blind or the lowest darkness.¹ There is no trace of the fires of hell, nor of a wolf of hell in the Vedic literature,² nor can the view of Geldner³ that the word Vīci in the Rigveda⁴ directly denotes hell be accepted; but there is reason enough to hold that the idea was present in germ. The actual tortures of hell are reserved for later texts in the main, and are dwelt on by Buddhism in a way to make us realize that on the popular mind these horrors had due result. In the Atharvaveda⁵ the sinners who injure the Brahman sit in streams of blood eating hair, and in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa⁶ and the Jaiminīya the proud Bhṛgu goes to the other world, where he sees many horrible things such as men being cut to pieces, and men being eaten, and also the lord of the place as a black man with a staff and yellow eyes beside two maidens, one fair and one, described by an epithet *atikalyāṇī*, as either ‘very fair’ or ‘past her beauty’. The Jaiminīya mentions three hells and three heavens. Another horror is suggested by the Kauṣītaki Brāhmaṇa,⁷ which threatens man with being eaten in the next world by the animals which he devoured in this, unless he adopts a certain ritual practice of special potency. The idea of punishment or reward according to one’s deeds is constantly expressed in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa⁸ under diverse forms, but it appears rather as a philosophical doctrine brought out to explain the operation of the universe than as a popular belief. The Vedic view is clearly far other than this: the great majority of men believed themselves to be good and destined to the joys of heaven, but they did not regard these joys as making earth less desirable. The normal attitude of the whole of the Vedic religion, down to the very end of the period of the Brāhmaṇas, is that it is a good thing to behold the light of the sun, and to live a hundred years, for which prayers and spells alike are earnestly resorted to, and that, at the end of the life one attains, there will be another, if different yet analogous, life in the world to come with the same pleasures as on earth, but without the disadvantages of human imperfection.

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⁶ Punishment is denied by Roth, JAOS. iii. 329–47; Weber, ZDMG. ix. 238, 239; it is generally accepted now: Scherman, *Visionslitteratur*, pp. 122 ff.; Hopkins, *Rel. of India*, p. 147; Oldenberg, *Rel. des Veda*², pp. 536 ff.; Zimmer, *Altindisches Leben*, p. 417; Macdonell, *Ved. Myth.*, p. 169.

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⁷ RV. vii. 104. 3, 17, 11; ii. 29. 6; ix. 73. 8, 9; iv. 5. 5.

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⁸ xii. 4. 36; Whitney, JAOS. xiii. p. civ.

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⁹ VS. xxx. 5. For Iran cf. Moulton, *Early Zoroastrianism*, pp. 172 ff.

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¹ AV. ii. 14. 8; v. 30. 11; xviii. 3. 3; viii. 2. 24 is like RV. x. 152. 4, dubious.

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² Oldenberg, *Rel. des Veda*², pp. 539, 540, against Scherman (ii. 29. 6, wolf; iv. 5. 4; vii. 59. 8, fires of hell).

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³ *Festgruss an Weber*, p. 22.

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⁴ x. 10. 6.

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⁵ v. 19.

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⁶ xi. 6. 1; JB. i. 42–44 in JAOS. xv. 234–8. That the man is Yama is unproved; for the *nārakāḥ*, see JB. i. 325.

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⁷ xi. 3.

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⁸ vi. 2. 2. 27; x. 6. 3. 1; Weber, ZDMG. ix. 237 ff. Flames or a scale determine their merit, ÇB. i. 9. 3. 2; xi. 2. 7. 33, both apparently speculative doctrines. In JUB. iv. 26 the organs of man are speculatively made ten heavens or hells (*nārakāḥ*). In JUB. i. 5 a deity, perhaps Rudra (above, Chap. 9, § 10), keeps back the evil, but is answered by the assertion that the god saw what he did and really did it, since he else would not have allowed him to act; an interesting, but obscure doctrine.

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As compared with the clear conception of the dwelling of the spirit in the highest heaven or in hell, there is little trace in the Vedic literature of the more simple and perhaps more primitive conception⁹ which regards the dead as dwelling in the earth, whether actually in the place of burial, or in the under world. The idea that the dead man's spirit went to the sky is not in the slightest degree essentially bound up with the burning by fire, for the Rigveda¹ expressly places both the Fathers, who have been burnt, and those who have not been burnt, as dwelling in the heaven, and there is no hint of any contrary view in Vedic literature. But undoubtedly here and there the idea is to be seen that the burning by the fires was the moment of the passage of the soul to the sky: of this the best proof is the doctrine of Āçvalāyana² that the place attained by the spirit depends on the nature of the fire, which first seizes the corpse when the body is set on the bier within the reach of fires derived from the sacred three fires. But this example in itself is not in the slightest degree a proof that it was the fire which sent the spirit to heaven: it is only a natural, but not primitive, view, as is shown by the mere fact that it depends on the use of the three fires, which the average householder could not dream of maintaining.

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The real view was doubtless less complicated, and in the same passage Āçvalāyana presents us with a different idea: a pit, knee deep, is to be dug north-east of the Āhavanīya fire, a water plant, Çīpāla, is put there, and with the smoke the soul thence goes to the heaven. This latter view, which looks at the earth as the place of the dead, is also supported by various other considerations. When a man is near to death, a spell is used to bring him from the lower to the upper earth to the protection of Aditi, sun and moon.³ When a pit is dug, as often in the ritual, it is called the place of the Fathers; what is dug down has the Fathers as its deity;⁴ Yama⁵ even is lord of the earth; the darkness of the abode of the dead is referred to in passages where we cannot see any reference to the punishments of hell;⁶ a spell of the Atharvaveda⁷ seeks to send his enemy to the place of Yama; the dead are mentioned as living at the roots of the plants; the dead man in the funeral ritual is spoken of as being laid to rest in mother earth, which is to be kind to him. The path of the gods is often distinguished from the path of the Fathers,⁸ the presence of the dogs⁹ on the way shows that the road was a special one, and not the peaceful path of the gods;

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the door of the heaven is in the north-east, that of the world of the Fathers in the south-east,¹⁰ a conception which is clearly due in part at least to opposition to the world of the gods: the relation of the south to the Fathers may be due to the fact¹¹ that on the shortest day, the time of the spirits *par excellence*, the sun is at the furthest south point in his course.

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The path too appears to be a different one from that of the gods since it is described as *pravat*, which may denote either a downward path as of a stream, or, at any rate, a path forward to the horizon, rather than one rising erect to the heaven.¹² But, if any doubt existed as to the connexion of the spirits with the earth, it would be removed by the descriptions of the ritual of the dead, which, though not given in detail in the Brāhmaṇas, are set out at length in the Sūtras, and must be of great antiquity in their essence.¹ The gifts for the souls are not sent to them by fire to be conveyed to the sky: they are often laid in pits on the earth or upon the earth, in the neighbourhood of human dwellings which spirits all the world over are ever supposed to haunt: they come to the meal, and sit on the place made ready for them, or they find their way into the water-bottle:² they take out the heat of the food, and leave only the outer substance.³ At the end of the meal they are sent away, politely indeed, with the words, 'The Fathers have satisfied themselves', or, as at the Anthesteria in Athens, more directly with, 'Depart, ye Fathers, Soma-loving, on your ancient deep paths;

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but return a month later to our house to eat the offering, with wealth in offspring, in heroes.'⁴ The shaking out of the garment of the offerer is another proof of the anxiety to be rid of the ghostly guests.⁵ But it must not for a moment be supposed that the belief in the presence of the spirits on earth on such occasions was incompatible with the belief in their dwelling in the sky: the two beliefs are inextricably confused in the human mind at the present day, and have been so confused for centuries, probably for thousands of years.

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⁹ Cf. Rhys, *Celtic Heathendom*, pp. 657 f.

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¹ x. 15. 4; AV. xviii. 2. 34.

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² AGS. iv. 4.

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³ AV. viii. 2. 15.

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⁴ TS. i. 3. 6. 1; vi. 3. 4. 2; ÇB. iii. 6. 1. 13; v. 2. 1. 7.

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⁵ PGS. i. 5. 10.

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⁶ e. g. RV. x. 132. 4.

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⁷ ii. 12. 7.

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⁸ AV. xviii. 4. 62; RV. x. 2. 7; 18. 1.

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⁹ AV. viii. 1. 9, 10.

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¹⁰ ÇB. xiii. 8. 1. 5; xii. 7. 3. 7; vi. 6. 2. 4.

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¹¹ Kern, *Der Buddhismus*, i. 359.

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¹² RV. x. 14. 1; AV. vi. 28. 3; xviii. 4. 7; Oldenberg, *Rel. des Veda*², p. 545; reference to a stream in the path is hinted at in AV. xviii. 4. 7; the boat in RV. x. 63. 10, is, however, probably mythological; cf. TA. vi. 7. 2; Scherman, *Visionslitteratur*, p. 112. In Kauṣ. i. 3 it appears as the Vijarā stream of perpetual youth. The later Vaitaraṇī is not mentioned in the Veda, nor does Sarasvatī seem to play this role.

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¹ GGS. iv. 2 ff. The authorities are given fully in Caland, *Altindischer Ahnenkult*.

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² Caland, *Altind. Ahnenkult*, p. 89.

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³ *Ibid.* p. 180.

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⁴ HGS. ii. 13. 2; Kauç. lxxxviii. 28; Farnell, *Cults*, v. 221 ff.

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⁵ Kauç. lxxxviii. 27. The mind is similarly recalled when it is conceived as mingling with the souls in the feast, VS. iii. 53 ff.; KÇS. v. 9. 22.

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It is perfectly in keeping with the multitude of ideas regarding the nature of the future of the dead which must be produced by our total ignorance of its character, that the idea should be found that the newly departed does not at once join the congregation of the other ancient dead.⁶ In the first period, often for a year after death, the monthly Çrāddha offerings are not paid to the newly dead in the usual form of offerings to father, grandfather, and great grandfather: he is offered a separate offering: in this he is not invoked to come, doubtless because he is near at hand; he is not dismissed, but merely bidden be at peace; in place of the prayer that the gifts to the Fathers may be theirs for ever, it is merely asked that they may be present for the dead: the innovation of some schools in which the offerings to the Fathers were supplemented by one to the All-gods, a clear proof that the assimilation of Fathers and gods was in progress,⁷ is omitted in the case of the offering to one who has just died. The distinction is made in the later literature and can perhaps be traced right back to Çāṅkhāyana¹ by which the recently dead is a Preta, ‘departed’ spirit, and is distinguished from the Fathers, Pitaras, *par excellence*. It is, however, clear that the view is not that of the Rigveda,² where it is obviously contemplated that the souls join at once the ancient Fathers, but it is not necessary to regard it as a later innovation: it is one of these divergent views, which may be regarded as a sort of compromise between the idea of the soul in heaven and the soul in earth, but which need not have been later than the developed view of the soul as in heaven and which also need not have been ever generally accepted. It must, further, be remembered that the belief in the departure of the soul to the sky cannot be proved to be later than the belief in the soul remaining near the body. But it is natural to assume that in the earliest view the latter was the attitude of mind adopted, before the clear separation of mind and body produced the idea that the mind had no need to remain with the body,³ and that the soul, at first held to abide on earth near or with the body, was gradually conceived as going to the gods in the highest sky, while the older view lived on, combining in various ways with the new.

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⁶ Caland, *op. cit.*, pp. 160 ff., 181.

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⁷ Ludwig, *Rigveda*, vi. 196; Hillebrandt, *Ved. Myth.* iii. 418.

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¹ ÇGS. iv. 2. 7; 3. 5, 6. Cf. PGS. iii. 10. 49 ff. The distinction of name and the fact of a Preta becoming a Pitṛ in a year is stated in BGS. iii. 12. 14; cf. BhGS. iii. 17.

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² Oldenberg, *Rel. des Veda*², p. 536. Oltramare (*L'histoire des idées théosophiques*, i. 43) argues that the popular view was essentially that of the dwelling of the soul as a Preta, but this strains the evidence.

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³ Cf. Keith, *JHS.* xxxvi. 109; Helm, *Altgerm. Rel.* i. 135 ff., 147 ff. (development from stone to bronze ages in ideas of future life).

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It is probable that in the Indo-Iranian period there had already developed the conception of the distinction between the heavenly lot of the blessed dead and the dismal fate in hell of the evil. There is less ground for supposing that such beliefs go back to the Indo-European period;⁴ then it may be that the only idea of the fate of the dead was that of a continued existence in a shadowy and imperfect condition, best represented to us by the Hades of Homer. Of this there may be seen traces in the Vedic conception of the future of the dead; it is interesting that the vision of Bhṛgu presents us with something of this kind, though evil-doers suffer there, as do even in the Greek Hades certain criminals of conspicuous demerit. As it stands, however, the account is not early, since Varuṇa’s heaven appears to be located in the same region as that of the shades.⁵

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⁴ Cf. Carnoy, *Les Indo-Européens*, pp. 222 ff.; contra, L. B. Paton, *Spiritism*, pp. 104 ff.

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⁵ JB. i. 44.

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With the conception of the removal of the spirit to a greater distance is often conjoined with primitive peoples⁶ the idea of the final burial of the body which has been provisionally buried. In the Vedic funeral ritual there are different stages of the process of disposal of the dead to be noted, but the ritual does not reveal, as we have it, any trace of this conception of the removal of the Preta to the sphere of the Fathers as connected with the different progress of the burial rites. If the connexion existed, as it may well have done, it is not proved for India by the available authorities.

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⁶ Wilken, *Rev. Col. Int.* iii. 256 ff.; *ERE.* iv. 442 f.

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Even, however, as a Preta there is extremely little trace of the belief of the soul as a ghost which comes to visit men. It is possible, as we have seen, that dreams of the dead were ascribed to visits of their ghosts, though this is not directly recorded; the Rigveda¹ expressly refers to Fathers who sit in the regions of earth or in the dwellings of men; the Taittirīya Saṁhitā² declares that the man who draws blood from a Brahman must fail to attain the world of the Fathers for as many years as the blood wets grains of sand. It seems possible that in the case of a dead man, whose soul is to live in the world of earth, because the southern fire first reaches his body, the soul is regarded as remaining away from the world of the Fathers in heaven; reference is made in that view also to the Fathers, who live in the air, and whom we may imagine as ghosts there, but too much faith may not be placed in this conception.³ We hear of the appearance of Uccaiççravas Kaupayeya to instruct his nephew on a mystery of the Sāman.⁴ But the normal view is that men and the Fathers do not appear together,⁵ and the Vedic literature hardly shows a trace of the belief in ghosts which abounds in the Buddhist: the idea that evil spirits are caused by men needing proper burial, which is common in modern India, and that ghosts exist everywhere and send disease, is one which is not to be found in the Atharvaveda, which in its innumerable references to demons, Rakṣases, Piçācas, and others, deals with them in such manner as to show that the belief that many of them were merely hostile spirits of the dead was not a living one.⁶ The Buddhist view, on the contrary, deals solemnly with ghosts:⁷ it treats the stealing of their property on the same footing as stealing the property of beasts, it provides for cases of sexual intercourse with such ghosts; ghosts abide in the lonely woods, on the banks of rivers, in a sugar field. They are often at the cross-roads and they crowd into their old home in eager search for kind friends to give them a little food. But in the main it is clear the ghosts are not normal things: it is not a case of simple belief in the constant presence of the dead among the living which the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa denies.⁸ They are guilty souls suffering punishment, naked or covered barely by their hair, without protection against the heat, which fills them, from water, shade, or wind, hungry and thirsty, for the water even of the Ganges turns to blood in their mouths. A city of ghosts is recorded by the Divyāvadāna⁹ of the Buddhists, an island inhabited by ghosts in a Jātaka,¹⁰ and the classical Sanskrit literature contains striking pictures of the ghosts which throng the places of sepulture of the dead. But how far these views were held in the Vedic period it is impossible to say : ¹ there is no reasonable doubt that some of the Buddhist ghosts are transmutations of tree and water spirits due to the growing animism which treated the spirit as merely living in, and not having its life in, the tree or the waters. But it is worth noting that in many cases the Buddhist ghosts are to die and go to hell in a certain period : ² it is natural to see in this the record of the condition before final damnation of the Preta.

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¹ x. 15. 2; cf. AV. xiii. 3. 9; TA. vi. 4. 2.

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² ii. 6. 10. 2. Cf. Manu, iv. 168; xi. 207.

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³ AGS. iv. 2; cf. RV. x. 15. 1, 2; Hillebrandt, *Ved. Myth.* ii. 91; iii. 417.

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⁴ JUB. iii. 29.

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⁵ ÇB. xiii. 8. 4. 12.

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⁶ Above, Part II, Chap. 5, § 3. On Epic views cf. Hopkins, *Epic Myth.*, pp. 29 ff.

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⁷ Pārājika, i. 10. 14; ii. 6. 4. *See* the *Petavatthu* and B. C. Law, *The Buddhist Conception of Spirits*.

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⁸ Cf. Lévi, *La doctrine du sacrifice*, pp. 98 ff.

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⁹ p. 7 (ed. Cowell and Neil).

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¹⁰ iv. 2.

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¹ Oldenberg, *Rel. des Veda*², pp. 559 ff.

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² *Petavatthu*, i. 10. 12 ; ii. 7. 12.

§ 3. The Transmutation of the Dead

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The Rigveda and the Vedic literature of the period of the Saṁhitās and the Brāhmaṇas presents us with no clear proof of the belief in the transmigration of the dead : the scanty evidence which has been adduced to prove the contrary view will be discussed hereafter,³ but in this place it is important to note certain really popular beliefs of which there are traces in that literature and in that of the Sūtras. The most important piece of evidence is late : it is recorded by Baudhāyana ⁴ that the birds at the offering to the dead should receive lumps of food, just like the Fathers, on the ground that in the form of birds the Fathers go about. It must, however, be admitted that this is not enough to prove a real popular belief. The idea of the incarnation of men as snakes is clearly to be accepted for the later period,⁵ but for the actual Vedic period it is not demonstrated, and it must in all likelihood be deemed to be an idea which entered the religion of the Veda with the advance of aboriginal influences. A more interesting case is recorded in the ritual for the final burial of the bones of the dead ; ⁶ if they cannot be found, then a garment is spread out, and, if a beast alights on it, it is treated as representing the bones of the dead. But this usage which is recorded for us at a late period cannot be pressed very far. To this scanty evidence may be added such support as can be obtained from such stories as that ⁷ of a mother, who, dying in the absence of her son, lies in wait for him in the shape of a newly created jackal to warn him of danger. The proof does not come to much, and none of it is of early date.

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³ Part V, Chap. 28.

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⁴ BDS. ii. 14. 9, 10. The Indo-European character of the belief is asserted by Feist, *Kultur der Indogermanen*, pp. 323 ff., but his evidence is not conclusive (Greek religion cannot safely be seen in the Hagia Triada sarkophagos, which is Minoan). Cf. also Johannson, *Solfågeln i Indien*, pp. 20 ff. ; G. Weicker, *Der Seelenvogel in der alten Literatur und Kunst*. That soul birds are referred to in PGS. i. 2. 4 ff., or TS. i. 1. 13, is out of the question (*contra*, Arbman, *Rudra*, pp. 100 f.).

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⁵ Winternitz, *Der Sarpabali*, p. 37 ; *contra*, Paton, *Spiritism*, pp. 96 ff.

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⁶ Kauç. lxxxiii. 22 ff.

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⁷ *Jātaka*, ii. 388 ; Oldenberg, *Rel. des Veda*², pp. 564, 565.

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Of the soul becoming a plant or passing into a plant we have no early evidence save such as may be derived from the solitary address to the dead man in the Rigveda ⁸ which tells him to go to the plants with his members, and the isolated statement that the Fathers lie about the roots of the plants.⁹

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⁸ x. 16. 3.

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⁹ ÇB. xiii. 8. 1. 20. Cf. Dieterich, *Mutter Erde*², p. 49 ; Cook, *Zeus*, i. 687, n. 3.

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There is much evidence of connexion with stars. This, however, is very different from a normal transmigration: it obviously is connected with the belief in the departure of the souls to the regions of heaven, and on the philosophical side it appears as the doctrine of the identity of the soul with Āditya.¹ The epic notoriously is fond of seeing the souls of the great heroes and priests of the past in the constellations of the heavens. The Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa² calls the stars women and the light of those who by their good works have reached the heaven. The same view is found in the Sūtra of Āpastamba.³ It is possible also that the same idea may be referred to in the Rigveda⁴ in the reference to the seers who watch the sun, or those who stand high in heaven through the giving of plenteous largesse to the priest.⁵ Perhaps too the name of the Great Bear as the Seven Seers,⁶ of one of the Pleiades as Arundhatī, and even the view of the Kṛttikās as wives of the Bears, may be traced to this idea. The view that the moon is the abode of the souls is found also in the later period, but there is no identification with the moon, but merely by a transfer of ideas the change of the resting-place of the souls.⁷

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¹ TB. iii. 10. 9. 11; ÇB. ii. 6. 4. 8 ff.

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² vi. 5. 4. 8; cf. Hillebrandt, *Ved. Myth.* iii. 420–3, who finds planets in most impossible places, e. g. the five Adhvaryus of RV. iii. 7. 7, or perhaps (iii. 321, n. 1) the Pleiades as the Maruts transported to heaven. Cf. above, Chap. 11, § 10.

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³ ApDS. ii. 9. 24. 14.

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⁴ x. 107. 2; 154. 5; AV. xviii. 2. 47.

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⁵ Oldenberg, *Rel. des Veda*², p. 566. For the epic see Hopkins, *Epic Myth.*, p. 53.

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⁶ ÇB. ii. 1. 2. 4; xiii. 8. 1. 9; JUB. iv. 26. 12; HGS. i. 12. 14 ff.; cf. RV. iv. 42. 8.

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⁷ Kauṣ. i. 2; KÇS. xxv. 6. 11; Hillebrandt, *Ved. Myth.* i. 276, 394 ff.; Scherman, *Visionslitteratur*, p. 29. On shooting stars cf. MS. i. 8. 6; *Ath. Pariçiṣṭa*, lviii b. i. 3 ff.; Hopkins, *Epic Myth.*, p. 34; Haradatta, on ApDS. i. 11. 31. 17. Cf. F. Cumont, *After-Life in Roman Paganism*, pp. 92 ff., 104 ff. It is very dubious if we are to see Chaldean influence, as held by Cumont and E. Pfeiffer, *Studien zum antiken Stern-glauben*, pp. 113 ff.

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