The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c35.12

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