The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c34.s2.71

v2.c34.s2.71

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.