The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c35.16

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.