The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c35.59

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.