Pramāṇa · Search · About · API

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c35: Chapter 24. The Disposal of the Dead

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c35

Language
English

Chapter 24. The Disposal of the Dead

v2.c35.2

THERE is nothing in Vedic literature to encourage the view, which has been so energetically contended for in connexion with western civilization, that the custom of burning the dead is one which denotes an essential distinction of race, as contrasted with the practice of burying the dead.¹ The burning of the dead is set over against the burying of the dead in the Rigveda ² merely as two legitimate alternative methods, and this is the state of affairs throughout the history of India. Burning is normally preferred, the chief exceptions being very holy ascetics and infants under two years of age,³ but the existence of burial cannot be denied for any period. Moreover it is important to note that the double practice of burial or burning is recorded of many other objects which it is desired to dispose of, owing to their dangerous character. Nor is it to be doubted ⁴ that the primitive use of fire in this case was that of removing the dread substance, which burial could also effect. The idea that burning was necessary to take the soul to heaven is not Vedic: the Rigveda proves that from the earliest recorded period the unburnt dead went to heaven no less than the burnt.

v2.c35.3

¹ Keith, *JRAS.* 1912, pp. 470-4.

v2.c35.4

² x. 15. 4.

v2.c35.5

³ Roth, *ZDMG.* ix. 471; Hopkins, *Rel. of India*, pp. 271 ff.; Caland, *Todtengebräuche*, pp. 93-5; *PGS.* iii. 10. 5. The placing of the funeral pyre on a ship (as in Teutonic usage) is not proved for India; the passage cited by Zimmer (*Altindisches Leben*, p. 410) from RV. x. 135 does not naturally bear this sense; Oldenberg, *Ṛgveda-Noten*, ii. 351.

v2.c35.6

⁴ Cf. Rohde, *Psyche*³, i. 26 ff.; Helm, *Altgerm. Rel.* i. 152; Pfuhl, *GGA.* 1906, p. 342; below, Appendix F.

v2.c35.7

Other modes of disposal of the dead are referred to in the Rigveda ⁵ and the Atharvaveda.⁶ The dead might be cast away (*paroptāḥ*), or they might be exposed (*uddhitāḥ*). The latter expression seems to mean exposed on trees, a practice which was known in later India, and which is referred to in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa,⁷ being prescribed as the expiation, in the case in which a cow is slaughtered and found to be in calf, as regards the disposal of beasts to devour (Zimmer, *Altindisches Leben*, p. 402), or merely to depositing dead bodies in cemeteries, as recognized in Buddhist tales; *Buddhist India*, pp. 78 f.; below, p. 424, n. 6.

v2.c35.8

⁵ x. 15. 4 (burnt and not burnt).

v2.c35.9

⁶ xviii. 2. 34. Those cast away may refer to a usage as in Iran of throwing to the beasts to devour (Zimmer, *Altindisches Leben*, p. 402), or merely to depositing dead bodies in cemeteries, as recognized in Buddhist tales; *Buddhist India*, pp. 78 f.; below, p. 424, n. 6.

v2.c35.10

⁷ iv. 5. 2. 13. A similar custom is recorded of the Colchians (Ap. Rhod. iii. 200 ff.), who buried women. Cook (*Zeus*, i. 533, 534) conjectured that it was to bestow life on the tree or on the dead; and elsewhere (p. 687) adopts the view that trees planted round graves were originally homes for the spirits of the dead. Zimmer (*l. c.*) thinks the reference is to persons exposed in old age to death as among the Massagetae and others (*ibid.*, p. 328).

v2.c35.11

of the embryo. But these ideas are of no importance for Vedic India in general; the rite of burning is the rite which has won approval in the Sūtras, and that of burying the body is there severely restricted.

v2.c35.12

It is, however, a very different question whether this position is primitive. In one of the funeral hymns in the Rigveda¹ the dead is told to go to mother earth, which is to enclose him, as with a garment a mother her child. It is the view of the ritual texts that these words apply to the later rite by which the burnt bones of the dead are placed in an urn in earth, but the interpretation, though defended by Oldenberg,² cannot be treated as natural, and we must admit that it is only reasonable to assume that it is meant for an actual burial. The later ritual which had in the main given up burial for burning naturally had to use the verses somewhere, and the burial of the bones gave an excellent opportunity for this action, but the fact remains that the verses are burial verses, that the Rigveda treats burial and burning as on the same footing, and that it probably represents contemporary fact.³

v2.c35.13

¹ x. 18; cf. AV. xviii. 2. 50-2.

v2.c35.14

² *Rel. des Veda*², pp. 572 ff.; *Ṛgveda-Noten*, ii. 219 ff.; Caland, *Todtengebräuche*, p. 165.

v2.c35.15

³ For the Avestan practice, cf. Moulton, *Early Zoroastrianism*, p. 163. See also von Schroeder, VOJ. ix. 112 ff.; Weber, SBA. 1896, p. 255; Hopkins, JAOS. xvi. p. cliii.

v2.c35.16

The details of the burning alone can be reconstructed with certainty, but many of them must be assumed to have applied equally to burial.⁴ In the moment of death the man was laid on the ground, which is smeared with cowdung and strewn with grass, near his sacred fire. The dead then was washed and anointed: the hair, the beard, and the nails were closely trimmed: a garland and fresh garment were laid upon him. The women of the house⁵ wailed around the place on which he was laid, tearing or loosening their hair, like the mourners at a Roman funeral, smiting their breasts and thighs. The body was borne to the grave or taken there on a car: the tracks of the party—rather than of the dead—were wiped out by means of a bundle of twigs attached to the dead, so as to prevent the recurrence of the spirit of the dead. The mourners accompanied the bier with loosened hair. Perhaps as the procession moved along were repeated verses⁶ urging the dead to go on his long way, to unite with the Fathers and with Yama, to leave sin behind, to go home, and to escape the dogs of Yama, while evil spirits were banned. The dead was then laid on the funeral pyre, in the midst of three fires produced by manipulation from the three sacred fires maintained by him, if he did so maintain them. Then the wife of the dead man is placed beside him, but taken away with the words,¹ ‘Arise, O woman, to the world of the living; departed is the life of him with whom thou liest; to marriage here hast thou attained with him as husband who graspeth² thy hand.’ It is clear that the husband’s brother or some other—a pupil or aged servant, according to Āçvalāyana—must be meant who takes her in wedlock.³ The bow⁴ is taken from the hand of the dead if a Kṣatriya—in the case of a Brahman⁵ a staff, of a Vaiçya an ox-goad, according to the later ritual—with a verse saying that it is taken for attainment of lordly power and strength: the later ritual,⁶ however, breaks the bow and leaves it with the dead, as the soldiers of Brennus when they died had their swords broken and laid by them to deceive the learned Polybios and the modern world for two thousand years.⁷ Further, in the ritual the offering utensils of the dead are placed on the bier with him, only the stone, metal, or earthen being kept back and given to a Brahman, a practice disapproved by some, or thrown into water, or kept by the son of the dead.⁸ This usage is apparently to be seen in the Rigveda⁹ as applied to a Soma vessel at least.

v2.c35.17

⁴ ÇB. xi. 5. 2; xiii. 8 for valuable notices; also TS. vi; ĀÇS. vi. 10; AGS. iv. 1 ff.; ÇGS. iv. 14 ff.; PGS. iii. 10; KÇS. xvi. 3, 4; xvii. 7; Kauç. lxxx. ff.; Oldenberg, *Rel. des Veda*², pp. 572 ff.; Caland, *Die altindischen Todten- und Bestattungsgebräuche* (Amsterdam, 1896); and ed. of Baudhāyana, Hiraṇyakeçi, and Āpastamba Pitṛmedhasūtras (1896); Roth, ZDMG. viii. 467 ff.; Zimmer, *Altindisches Leben*, pp. 404 ff.

v2.c35.18

⁵ See Bloomfield, AJP. xi. 336 ff.

v2.c35.19

⁶ RV. x. 14. 7-12. The Sūtras vary; cf. Kauç. lxxx. 35, 42; AGS. iv. 2. 10; ÇGS. iv. 14. 7.

v2.c35.20

¹ RV. x. 18. 8; the practice was not in favour with the later feeling; Caland, *Todtengebräuche*, pp. 43–5.

v2.c35.21

² This must be the sense as taken by Oldenberg and Caland. A reference to the dead man is impossible, though taken so by Max Müller and Roth, and TA. vi. 1. 3 clearly negates this sense.

v2.c35.22

³ AGS. iv. 2. 18.

v2.c35.23

⁴ RV. x. 18. 9.

v2.c35.24

⁵ AV. xviii. 2. 59; Kauç. lxxx. 48 ff.; *ibid.* 46, and AV. xviii. 4. 56 also prescribe the taking of a piece of gold from his hand. Pieces of gold—failing it, melted butter—are placed on the seven openings in the head of the dead; Caland, *Todtengebräuche*, p. 47; JGS. ii. 4; cf. the Greek and Roman usage.

v2.c35.25

⁶ AGS. iv. 2. 22.

v2.c35.26

⁷ Reinach, *Cultes, Mythes et Religions*, iii. 141. Cf. Helm, *Altgerm. Rel.* i. 140, n. 39; Hopkins, *Origin of Religion*, p. 110.

v2.c35.27

⁸ ÇB. xii. 5. 2. 14; AGS. iv. 3. 18, 19; Kauç. lxxxi. 19; JAOS. xxxiv. 249.

v2.c35.28

⁹ x. 16. 8. Removal of risk for the living may have operated as well as provision for the dead.

v2.c35.29

The Rigveda¹⁰ expressly refers to the burning of a goat which is the share of Agni, and to the use of the flesh of a cow to protect the body against the flame. In the ritual texts details of the use of the flesh of the cow are given: the omentum is placed over the face, the kidneys in either hand, to satisfy the dogs of Yama—like the honey cake for Kerberos—and the skin is put over the whole. A goat is also tied to the pyre so loosely that it can easily break the cord. The pyre is then lighted or the three fires are directed towards it, and Agni is invoked to take the dead uninjured to the Fathers. Other prayers and offerings seem to have been addressed to Yama, the Aṅgirases, and Sarasvatī;¹¹ the sense of the ceremony is shown by the words of the prayer, not recorded in the Rigveda,¹² ‘From him thou art born; may he in turn be born from thee.’

v2.c35.30

¹⁰ x. 16. 4, 7.

v2.c35.31

¹¹ Kauç. lxxxi. 34–9; RV. x. 18. 1–6, 13 ff.; 17. 7–9 are used here according to Oldenberg (*Rel. des Veda*², p. 578), but cf. Caland, *Todtengebräuche*, p. 65.

v2.c35.32

¹² ÇB. xii. 5. 2. 15; TA. vi. 1. 4.

v2.c35.33

The ceremony of the burning of the body is followed by the departure of the mourners who do not turn round: they wash themselves and offer libations of water for the dead: they change their garments: they pass under a yoke¹ of branches of the purifying Parṇa tree, they touch on entering the house purifying things, water, fire, dung, mustard grains, and barley grains, the power of which lies in the name Yava, which is constantly connected in the Vedic mind with *yu*, ‘restrain’ (demons). Perhaps,² too, at this point, and not merely at the putting away of the bones, there takes place the ceremony of removing from the house, and placing in a desolate place, the fire which must not go through the door. It is impossible to believe that this fire was really in the view of the Rigveda kept for the making of offerings to the dead, though the exact meaning of the references to it in the Rigveda is hard to ascertain.³ Moreover, until the bones are collected, or for three or ten days, the relatives must observe certain restrictions: they must not use their ordinary beds, but sleep on the ground, must observe chastity, cook no food, and live on what they buy, or what others give to them. The nature of these observances is obvious: it is in some way to avoid the risk which death has brought into the vicinity of the relatives: the view that the Preta of the dead is near at hand is clear. The prohibition of cooking is attested by the Avesta also: after death the relatives should cook nothing for three days, and the Parsis observe this rule to the present day.⁴ Clearly the death has infected the food and the vicinity in which it was, and to eat it will bring injury. The sleeping on the ground is less easy to explain: it is possibly an effort to avoid the attention of the spirit if it returns: possibly it may be traced to the view that the relative, by contact with the dead, has contaminated himself and must be purified, before the bed can be safely approached, if it is not to be infected for all time to come: or communion with the earth may be desired. The abstinence from intercourse may be explained, as it is explained by Oldenberg,⁵ as due to the danger that injury might thus be done to any child which might perchance be born.

v2.c35.34

¹ The Mantras (*Todtengebräuche*, pp. 74, 76) suggest the idea of a barrier between dead and living.

v2.c35.35

² Oldenberg, *Rel. des Veda*², p. 578. The rite seems to follow the putting away of the bones in KÇS. xxi. 4. 28; cf. Kauç. lxix; AGS. iv. 6. RV. x. 16. 9 ff. are used.

v2.c35.36

³ Bergaigne, *Rel. Véd.* i. 78.

v2.c35.37

⁴ SBE. v. 382, n. 2. Ethnic parallels in Wilken, *Rev. Col. Int.* iv. 352; Frazer, *Journ. Anthrop. Inst.* xv. 92 f. Cf. Stevenson, *Rites of the Twice-Born*, p. 154.

v2.c35.38

⁵ *Rel. des Veda*², p. 590.

v2.c35.39

The third or tenth day is that of the collecting of the bones of the dead.⁶ In the first instance the place of burning is cooled by the use of cooling substances, water plants, one Kiyāmbu with the very name suggesting water, and the inevitable frog.⁷ Water and milk are prescribed for the besprinkling of the place of the fire in the later ritual, which also provides for the offering of water and milk for the dead on the night after the death.⁸ According to Āçvalāyana,¹ who places the rite on the tenth day after death, the bones should be put, those of a man in a male urn and those of a woman in a female urn respectively, the reference being to marks on the urns which are treated as like the breasts of a woman.² The bones should be picked up by aged persons, in uneven numbers, not men and women together, with the thumb and the fourth finger and deposited without noise, those of the feet coming first, those of the head last. Then the bones are purified with a sieve, and the urn is placed in a pit where waters do not run together from every side, save rain water; earth is put down upon the urn, and it is covered with a lid. The performers then go away, not turning back, purify themselves, and offer a Çrāddha to the dead. According to the Kauçika Sūtra,³ a different procedure is adopted, in so far that the bones are deposited at the root of a tree, with a verse of the Atharvaveda,⁴ which beseeches the great tree not to press heavily on them; but it is by no means clear that this is the original sense of the Atharvan verse, which may refer to proper burial.

v2.c35.40

⁶ Kaegi (*Die Neunzahl bei den Ostariern*) points to the importance of nine in the funeral rites of Indo-European peoples. In India the periods vary, but ten days is usual; Caland, *Todtengebräuche*, pp. 81–4; Paton, *Spiritism*, pp. 142 ff.

v2.c35.41

⁷ RV. x. 16. 13 ff.; Kauç. lxxxvi. 26, 27; *AJP.* xi. 342 ff.

v2.c35.42

⁸ PGS. iii. 10. 28.

v2.c35.43

¹ AGS. iv. 5. 7–10, using RV. x. 18. 10 ff.

v2.c35.44

² Lanman, *Sanskrit Reader*, p. 404. For the cleansing of the bones, cf. Germanic usage, Helm, *Altgerm. Rel.* i. 154 f. It may be a transfer of the usage of washing the dead body, or an effort to banish the soul entirely from connexion with earth.

v2.c35.45

³ lxxxii. 13.

v2.c35.46

⁴ xviii. 2. 25.

v2.c35.47

A still further rite is prescribed by the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa ⁵ and mentioned in other texts, the raising of a memorial to the dead. This is to be done a long time after the death; when even the year is forgotten is a suitable time. The bones are gathered from the hole in the earth or from the tree roots, in which case a verse ⁶ is used which rather points to the idea of real burial, and may suggest that once the gathering of the bones and the putting away of them in a relic mound were done when the body had decayed after normal burial. If the bones cannot be found, the rite alluded to above takes place:⁷ a garment is spread on the water's edge: the dead is called by name, and any beast ⁸ that alights is treated as representing the bones: in the alternative, dust from the place is used. The night is spent in ceremonies: women beating their thighs with the right hand,⁹ with hair loosened, wailing, thrice in the course of the night dance thrice round the bones. Lutes are played, and—doubtless to scare away spirits—a noise made by the beating of an old shoe on an empty pot or in other ways.¹⁰ In the morning the bones are taken to the new place of rest, which must be out of sight from the village, in a place where there is abundance of plants, around whose roots the Fathers are said to creep,¹ but no thorns. A hole is made or furrow ploughed: seeds of all sorts are sowed and the bones deposited. The hole is then covered over with stones and earth to make a memorial mound: in it seeds are sown to feed the dead,² and pits are dug in it into which water and milk are poured to please the dead.³

v2.c35.48

⁵ xiii. 8. 1; KÇS. xxi. 3. 1.

v2.c35.49

⁶ AV. xviii. 3. 70; Kauç. lxxxiii. 19. Oldenberg (*Rel. des Veda*², pp. 580, n. 4; 581, n. 4) suggests that the whole rite is a misunderstanding of the verse originally referring to the wood of the pyre, but this is not probable. Original burial is more likely.

v2.c35.50

⁷ Kauç. lxxxiii. 22 ff.

v2.c35.51

⁸ Doubtless normally an insect, which was often regarded in Greek religion as a vehicle of the soul (Cook, *Zeus*, i. 532, n. 12). Cf. the Samoan parallel in *Journ. Anthrop. Inst.* xv. 96, n. 1.

v2.c35.52

⁹ Cf. Eitrem, *Opferritus und Voropfer*, pp. 35, 42.

v2.c35.53

¹⁰ Kauç. lxxxiv. 9; KÇS. xxi. 3. 7.

v2.c35.54

¹ ÇB. xiii. 8. 1. 20.

v2.c35.55

² As at the piling of the fire, Weber, *Ind. Stud.* xiii. 245; Caland, *Todtengebräuche*, p. 177, misses the obvious purpose in this case of the rite.

v2.c35.56

³ For alleged remains at Lauriyā Nandangarh, see CHI. i. 616; above, p. 32, n. 1.

v2.c35.57

The departure from the place of the erection of the memorial is followed by many rites to prevent contamination, the use of fire, of the Apāmārga plant, the obliteration of the footsteps, the crossing of pits filled with water, and so on. The placing of a barrier of some sort between the dead and the living is a rite recorded in the Rigveda⁴ itself, whether the object is stone or some piece of earth.

v2.c35.58

⁴ x. 18. 3 and 4. From the idea of the inability of the soul to cross water is perhaps developed the later idea of the Vaitaraṇī stream and of a mimic boat to cross it (Caland, *Todtengebräuche*, pp. 8, 153). Hillebrandt (*Ved. Myth.* iii. 377) sees the Vaitaraṇī's prototype in the Sarasvatī of RV. x. 17. 7-9, and Roth (JAOS. xvi. p. ccxliii) finds the name in JUB. i. 25. 3.

v2.c35.59

The nature of the mode of disposal of the dead probably showed itself specially valuable in the Indian climate, but apart from this consideration, the influence of the practice of removing evil influences by burning, and of the worship of the fire, and the use of fire as the messenger between men and the gods, must have aided the development of the use of cremation as almost the normal and certainly much the most usual form of disposing of the dead. The belief in the burning of the dead as a suitable mode of disposal may be Indo-European,⁵ the evidence for this is merely the practice in early Greece and Germany also—but it may equally have been produced in India, perhaps at first under the influence of the needs of war, where the burial of the dead leaves them exposed to misusage by the enemy. It may be that the belief in burning is older than the belief in the heavenly abode, but that is not susceptible of proof; the fact that the Rigveda does not require burning in order that the dead may go to heaven may best be explained on the ground that the belief is older than burning of the dead, rather than that it developed and became independent of that burning. Naturally, however, in any case the burning of the dead was regarded as helping the path to the sky, and from another point of view here and there the idea presents itself that the dead man is in a sense⁶ an offering to the gods. Such an idea, however, never became of importance, to judge from its rare appearance, and from the fact that the burning of the dead was never decked out with the apparatus of the sacrifice.

v2.c35.60

⁵ Oldenberg, *Rel. des Veda*², pp. 584 ff. In primitive Greece, as in early Italy and Britain, both modes of disposal are found; we can hardly believe that in every case an Indo-European rite was superinduced on a non-Indo-European. Cf. Hopkins, *Origin of Religion*, pp. 148 ff.; for Germany, Helm, *Altgerm. Rel.* i. 152 ff. It was disapproved in Iran.

v2.c35.61

⁶ RV. x. 16. 5; late Sūtra evidence is given by Caland, *Todtengebräuche*, pp. 178, 179, who seems to overestimate its value.

v2.c35.62

The exact idea connected with the burning seems to have been that the whole self was burned, soul as well as body, in order to convey it, in a refined form but still unaltered in essence, to the regions of heaven. It is clear from what has been already said that there is no question of the mere sending thither of the soul in the Vedic religion: in the philosophy different ideas appear, but not in the religious faith. Nevertheless at the same time the man is still regarded as being in some measure present in the bones which are left:¹ even if, as is probable, the original force of the verses of the Rigveda and the Atharvaveda, which refer to burial, dealt with real burial, yet when they were adopted for burial of the bones, they must have been felt not to run counter to popular belief.

v2.c35.63

¹ A corporeal resurrection is seen by Jackson in Yasna, xxx. 7; the Persians according to Herodotos (i. 140; cf. vii. 117) buried their dead.

v2.c35.64

In the Vedic belief the popular view that the dead must be provided with the same things² as they enjoyed in the world of men has been greatly attenuated. It is absurd to suppose that all women were ever burned with the dead:³ the practice never existed in India at any time which is recorded, and in many cases the result would have been to leave children without proper care. But it is perfectly clear that the wife of a great man might be burned with him, and that the Rigveda⁴ shows a stage of opinion in which this rite has been definitely abolished by the Brahmans, and has been replaced by the giving of her to the brother or some other relative of the dead in symbolic, if not necessarily always real, marriage: we may well believe that the marriage might be real only if the dead had left no son alive to perform for him the funeral ceremonies. Similarly the dead was deprived not merely of his bow, but also of a piece of gold, which his eldest son received: it is difficult not to believe that the older practice was as in ancient Greece to allow him to bear with him to his future abode the ornament of gold which he wore in his life on earth.⁵ The practice of enveloping the body of the dead in the limbs of the cow is a curious one, and offers possibilities of different explanations. But it is clearly the view of the Rigveda that the heat of the fire is to exhaust its fury on the members of the goat and presumably also of the cow,⁶ and it may be that the offering was a sort of substitution for the dead himself, so that evil powers might assail it in place of him. The goat stands in another category: it may be compared to the goat which is slain with the sacrificial horse to show it the way: in the passage to the next world the journey may be trackless and the sure-footed goat will find the way.¹

v2.c35.65

² e.g. garments (AV. xviii. 4. 31). No burning of slaves ever occurs, while in Germany it was frequent.

v2.c35.66

³ In no country is so universal a custom known.

v2.c35.67

⁴ Cf. AV. xviii. 3. 1 (TA. vi. 1. 3); Macdonell and Keith, *Vedic Index*, i. 488, 489; Feist, *Kultur der Indogermanen*, p. 311; Bergaigne, *Rel. Véd.*, i. 78; Garbe, *Beiträge zur indischen Kulturgeschichte*, pp. 148 ff.

v2.c35.68

⁵ The idea of paying Charon is obviously a misunderstanding. In central Europe the gift is accompanied by the words, 'Thou hast thy due; leave me in peace'; Carnoy, *Les Indo-Européens*, p. 224. Gold possibly was held as a sun symbol to give the dead aid in attaining immortal life.

v2.c35.69

⁶ Oldenberg, *Rel. des Veda*², p. 587.

v2.c35.70

¹ According to AV. xviii. 2. 22, the Maruts are to cool the dead through the goat, perhaps by using up the power of the fire on it.

v2.c35.71

In addition to the normal rites special forms² are prescribed for many cases, such as the death of an Agnihotrin, of a pregnant woman after the saving of the embryo, and a Brahman who has acquired knowledge of the Brahman, the rite in his case being the Brahmamedha.³ In the case of death in absence the body may be preserved in oil or only the bones brought back for the formal rites. When a man is believed dead the cremation of a figure representing him is allowed, and, if after such a rite has been performed he should return alive, he is subjected to the same form of ritual as a newly born child, including remarriage to his wife.⁴ The modern practice by which in the burial of an ascetic his skull is broken open with a coconut to allow the escape of the spirit, though based on a doctrine of the Upaniṣads⁵ as to the departure of the soul through the skull on death, is not recorded in any early Vedic text. Though children under two were usually buried or thrown away, they might be cremated if their teeth had grown;⁶ burial in the house which is elsewhere often recorded—perhaps as a mode of securing rebirth in the mother—is unknown.

v2.c35.72

² Caland, *Todtengebräuche*, pp. 85-98.

v2.c35.73

³ TA. iii.

v2.c35.74

⁴ Cf. Frazer, *Journ. Anthrop. Inst.* xv. 64.

v2.c35.75

⁵ CU. viii. 6. 6.

v2.c35.76

⁶ So in AB. vii. 14. 4 an animal is fit for sacrifice when its teeth appear. That bodies were often merely dumped on burial grounds is suggested by the Buddhist evidence and that of classical literature, as well as of Vedic evidence (above, p. 417, n. 6). See also Paton, *Spiritism*, pp. 122 ff. The view that Yama's dogs reflect the custom of exposure is implausible; for Hekate and the dog, see Farnell, *Cults*, ii. 510.

Linked texts (16)