The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c35.39

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.