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The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c36: Chapter 25. The Cult of the Dead

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c36

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Chapter 25. The Cult of the Dead

§ 1. The Living and the Dead

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THE attitude of the Vedic Indian to his dead is one of distinctive and pronounced individuality. The constant anxiety lest from the dead should come injury to the living is perfectly obvious, but it must be admitted that it does not show any trace of being due to the direct fear of the spirit of the dead: it is the fear of death which marks the attitude of the Indian: the dead has not a hostile nature, but the thing which has affected him is to be feared. It is, therefore, intelligible that the Indian in the Vedic period looks, despite his dread of death, with affection and esteem upon his ancestors, and that much of his existence should be concerned with the means of securing them nourishment.¹ That food is required especially on certain occasions, not less often than once a month and occasionally at other times: in a certain portion of the rainy season the dead are conceived as leaving the abode of heaven and coming to the houses of their kin to seek for food.² On the other hand if the men care for their Fathers, it is but natural that these Fathers should be deemed to be anxious to aid and assist them, and the companionship of the blessed dead with the gods encourages the belief that they have power to aid, even as the gods have power.³ The Fathers generally are often referred to in the Rigveda and the later literature as invoked to confer boons, similar to those which the gods convey, and, though they are distinctly differentiated by a multitude of things, and especially by cult, from the powers of heaven, nevertheless, for the purpose of being a very present help in tribulation, they appear to be ranked as not unworthy of invocation with, or even without, the gods. Like the gods, men pray to them for success, for the defeat of enemies, for the gift of rain, for the bestowal of eloquence, or for abundance of food. Even in battle the Fathers are invoked as warriors.⁴ But the energy of the Fathers has one special end, the production of offspring, in which they have the special interest that the rites for the dead can only be kept up by the device of continuing the family. At the offering for the dead the great-grandfather, the grandfather, and the father are all invoked to send sons :¹ the wife of the offerer is given a lump of the food made ready for the Fathers with the prayer that they may accord her a son ;² the offerer³ himself, who desires a son, wets his face with the remains of the water poured out for the Fathers. They naturally find a place in the ritual for the marriage ceremony : food is offered to them before the marriage to induce them to give offspring to the bride, and, when the bridal procession starts out, it is thought that the Fathers crowd around to see the bride.⁴ But we do not hear in any case that the Fathers were deemed to incorporate themselves in the bride for rebirth, as is one constant view of birth in Australian belief, and as seems in some degree to have been the view taken of the Roman Genius.⁵

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¹ Caland (*Todtengebräuche*, pp. 171, 172) insists that fear is the only motive even for the feeding of the dead, but this is clearly untenable; cf. Meyer, *Gesch. d. Alt.*³ I. i. § 62; Warde Fowler, *Roman Ideas of Deity*, pp. 23–6; Hopkins, *Origin of Religion*, pp. 74, 78 ff.; Max Müller, *Egypt. Myth.*, p. 183; Helm, *Altgerm. Rel.* i. 136 ff. For modern India, cf. Stevenson, *Rites of the Twice-Born*, pp. 156–92. See also Paton, *Spiritism*, chap. iv.

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² Caland, *Todtenverehrung*, pp. 43 ff.

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³ Bergaigne, *Rel. Véd.* i. 95 ff.; AV. iv. 15. 15; vii. 12. 1; xviii. 2. 30; 3. 15; ii. 12. 4, &c.; TA. v. 7, 8; AGS. iv. 7. 1.

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⁴ RV. vi. 75. 9.

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¹ Kauç. lxxxviii. 28.

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² Kauç. lxxxix. 6.

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³ AGS. iv. 7. 15.

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⁴ Kauç. lxxxiv. 12 ; AV. xiv. 2. 73. Cf. RV. x. 40. 10, with Oldenberg's note.

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⁵ Cf. Reinach, *Cultes, Mythes et Religions*, iv. 361 ff. ; Warde Fowler, *Religious Experience of the Roman People*, pp. 74, 75. In India this view appears only under the influence of transmigration in the Upaniṣad period and in Buddhism ; Windisch, *Buddha's Geburt*, pp. 9 ff. ; cf. Segerstedt, *Le Monde Oriental*, iv. 144 f. ; Oldenberg, *Rel. des Veda*², p. 565, n. 1.

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In the overwhelming majority of cases the person invoked is not an individual, but the whole body of the Fathers as such : nevertheless in occasional instances an individual ancestor may be invoked, like Kaṇva or Kakṣīvant, or a specific group such as the Vasiṣṭhas.⁶ Men too occasionally appear among the gods with divine attributes, such as Kutsa who is invoked along with Indra.⁷ Other men may here and there be placed in this position : the name, Udalākāçyapa, of a spirit invoked at the plough festival, does not look very divine or demoniac, but that is a mere speculation.⁸

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⁶ RV. x. 15. 8 ; AV. xviii. 3. 15.

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⁷ RV. v. 31, 9.

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⁸ PGS. ii. 13, 2 ; Oldenberg, *Rel. des Veda*², p. 567, n. 3.

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The attitude of the Fathers to the living is assumed by the latter to be one of friendship : they are invoked to turn the merit acquired by their good deeds to the overthrow of the foe of the living, but to their own they are dangerous only when these sin against them by failing to provide them with due offerings, a fact which seems clearly alluded to as early as the Rigveda.⁹ Their power to injure is pre-supposed by the help they are to give in the overthrow of enemies, but very little is said directly about it. In a spell against the Dasyus, who at the offering for the dead mix themselves with the Fathers looking like kinsmen, a torch is employed, but this is hardly any definite evidence that the Fathers *per se* were dangerous.¹⁰ Nor is the mere fact that various objects are buried at cross-roads for the destruction of enemies¹¹ any proof of their activity in effecting the desired destruction, since many other evil spirits inhabit cross-roads. The souls of unborn children become according to a late piece of evidence blood suckers,¹² and possibly this may explain the special objection felt in Vedic religion to the slayer of an embryo, but this explanation is not necessary. The danger from the dead is, as we have seen, fear of death, not of the spirits of the Fathers. Moreover, as we have noted, the Atharvaveda finds for the evils which are practised on men the cause in demons,¹ not in souls of the dead, which is again a strong piece of evidence that the mischievous powers of the dead were not strongly felt in the Vedic period.

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⁹ x. 15. 6 ; TB. i. 3. 10. 7. Brunnhofer (*Arische Urzeit*, pp. 280-4) cites RV. i. 119. 4 ; vi. 59. 1 in the same sense and refers the idea to phenomena of twilight !

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¹⁰ AV. xviii. 2. 28 ; Kauç. lxxxvii. 30.

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¹¹ AV. v. 31. 8 ; x. 1. 8.

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¹² Caland, *Altind. Ahnenkult*, p. 32.

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¹ The birth of a Rakṣas from the head of Namuci (ÇB. v. 4. 1. 9) is cited by Oldenberg as showing the close relation of demons and souls, though disguised.

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As we have seen, ghosts appear very little in the Vedic literature, and similarly the presence of the dead on earth to aid their offspring is practically unknown in Indian literature before the Buddhist era.²

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² See Mahāvagga, i. 4. 2; Udāna, i. 10, &c.

§ 2. The Offerings to the Dead in the Domestic Ritual

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Beside the regular offerings which are prescribed for the Fathers, there are others which are to be performed on special occasions, such as the birth of a son, a marriage, and the giving of the name to the child.³ In this case the offering or 'Çrāddha', which bears its name⁴ of that which is connected with Çraddhā, 'faith', from the fact that the presents to the Brahmans which accompany the offerings to the dead reveal the faith of the offerer in the Brahmans, is to be performed on the waxing half of the month, and before midday: the number of Brahmans chosen is even, not as usual odd: the performances are from left to right, not *vice versa*; barley replaces sesame; the milk meal lumps are mixed with sour milk and roasted grains, and the Fathers are addressed as Nāndīmukha, 'joyful in countenance',⁵ in place of 'with tearful countenance', which is elsewhere not rarely used. These rank as the Vṛddhi Çrāddhas, and similar to them are Pūrta Çrāddhas, at the dedication of wells, pools, and so on.

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³ AGS. ii. 5. 13 ff.; iv. 7. 1; BhGS. iii. 16; BGS. iii. 12. 2-15; GGS. iv. 3. 35 ff.; Caland, *Todtenverehrung*, pp. 39 ff.

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⁴ Max Müller, *India*, p. 235; see PB. xii. 11. 25; TS. vii. 4. 1. 1; ÇB. xiv. 1. 4. 10; RV. x. 151; Oldenberg, *Rel. des Veda*², p. 566, n. 4; ZDMG. l. 448 ff.

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⁵ They are clearly not the ancestors beyond the immediate three as has been suggested.

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Much more important are the regular monthly Çrāddhas⁶ performed on the day of new moon, month by month, and after midday. The important part of the rite is the choice of Brahmans to represent the Fathers, at least three, but often more, and on no account one only at least at the first Çrāddha offered. Moreover, by some authorities, further Brahmans are required to represent the All-gods. Three vessels of metal, stone, and clay are employed: into each water is poured, and in the view of Çaunaka⁷ the first vessel is not touched for the whole of the ceremony, as the Fathers would be present in it. Sesame is also put into the vessels. Then the water is offered as Arghya water to the Brahmans, and they are also given garlands, incense, lights, perfumes, and clothes. With the remains of the water the offerer wipes his face, if he desires a son. Then he asks their permission to offer lumps of food in the fire, and does so or places it in their hands: they are also given other food, which they eat, and the ceremony finishes when they are satisfied.

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⁶ AGS. iv. 7; ÇGS. iv. 1; HGS. ii. 10; BhGS. ii. 11-14.

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⁷ AGS. iv. 7. 16.

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Distinct from the monthly Pārvaṇa Çrāddha seems to have been another offering, the Māsika,¹ monthly brought on the waning half of the month on an uneven day. The rites for this day are varyingly given, and in some cases the rite seems to have been assimilated to the Aṣṭakā rites. For it Hiraṇyakeçin² lays down the rule that the sacrificer up to the age of fifty should offer to the Fathers the seam of his garment, and that otherwise he should offer hair. The first idea is clearly that the dead need garments: the second seems less obvious, and it is possible that it is due to the very different idea of substitution, which becomes the more necessary, since at fifty one is approaching the age when death is claiming a man more and more energetically.³ But other theories are possible; the giving of hair may be merely a desire for communion, the burial of hair with the dead has been explained by Eitrem⁴ as at once due to this desire⁵ and to the wish to lay apart that which has been contaminated by death.

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¹ AGS. ii. 5. 10.

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² ii. 10–13; so also at the Piṇḍapitṛyajña, ĀÇS. ii. 7. 6.

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³ TB. i. 3. 10. 7; Oldenberg, *Rel. des Veda*², pp. 552, 553.

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⁴ See Keith, *JHS.* xxxvi. 108.

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⁵ More plausibly Hopkins (*Origin of Religion*, pp. 118 ff.) holds that the gift of hair, which is endowed with life, is a mode of strengthening the dead, as is the offering of blood (Cumont, *After-Life in Roman Paganism*, pp. 51 f.).

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The Aṣṭakās⁶ are festivals of special importance and difficulty. The rule of Āçvalāyana is that there should be four, on the eighth day of the dark half of the month in the two months of each of the two seasons, winter and the cool season, Mārgaçīrṣa, Pauṣa, Māgha, and Phālguna. But the rule is that the number should be three or less. The normal view seems to be that Taiṣa, Māgha, Phālguna are the months, but the three ceremonies can be reduced to three days, the 7th to 9th of one month, or pressed into the eighth day only. Hiraṇyakeçin allows only one festival, the three-day rite of the Ekāṣṭakā, the eighth day of the dark half of the month Māgha. The deities of the Aṣṭakās are a matter of dispute: Agni, Sūrya, Prajāpati, night, the Nakṣatras, the seasons, and the Fathers have all claims. The nature of the offering is equally disputed: some demand flesh at all three: others cakes at the first, a cow at the second, and vegetables at the third, or the same set but in diverse order. A very odd rite is prescribed by the Mānava school,⁷ for the evening before the last Aṣṭakā: at the cross-roads the sacrificer kills a cow, dismembers it, and divides the flesh among the passers-by. The Aṣṭakā is followed by the Anvaṣṭakya, which is allowed to follow all three rites, or the middle one only. The nature of the rite is rather curious: a fire is made, surrounded, and an opening made in the north: an offering strew is laid down, and food placed on it, various forms of rice with sesame, milk rice, and mixed messes of meat and sour milk, and of meal and honey. Then he offers to Soma with the Fathers and to Agni Kavyavāhana, and thereafter gives to the Fathers in the east, and their wives in the west, shares of all except the honey drink: the Mothers receive also Surā and the scum of boiled rice. The offering is, according to Gobhila, made with much elaboration in pits which are dug for the offerings. Three lumps of food are made, and salve and sesame oil are also given to the Fathers and the Brahmans: the three lumps at the end are put to varied uses: the middle one his wife eats, if she wishes sons: the others are put in the water, or on a fire, or given to a cow or to a Brahman to eat.¹ The giving to a cow is of interest as it is also provided as a substitute for the offering of a cow at the appropriate Aṣṭakā that a cow should be given food to eat. It is difficult not to feel that this is a case of a very simple desire to save the life of the cow, and of the parallel desire to secure the favour of the cow. Another mode of evading the offering of a cow at the Aṣṭakās was to fire brushwood, an idea which Oldenberg² has suggested may be regarded as an effort to strengthen the sun at the period of the winter solstice, in which very roughly the Aṣṭakās tended to fall.

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⁶ AGS. ii. 4; ÇGS. iii. 12–14; GGS. iii. 10; iv. 1; MGS. ii. 8, 9; BhGS. ii. 15–17; BGS. ii. 11; PGS. iii. 3; HGS. ii. 13; Oldenberg, *Ind. Stud.* xv. 145 ff.; Winternitz, *VOJ.* iv. 205 ff.

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⁷ *VOJ.* iv. 211; MGS. ii. 9. 1–3.

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¹ GGS. iv. 1. 18 ff.; AGS. ii. 4. 8–10. The use of pits is not regularly provided for, but it is clearly old; cf. Homer, *Od.* x. 527 ff.; xi. 23 ff.; Wissowa, *Rel. der Römer*, pp. 234 ff.; Arbman, *Rudra*, pp. 73 ff. (whose German parallel, however, must be corrected; see Helm, *Altgerm. Rel.* i. 244).

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² *Rel. des Veda*¹, p. 446.

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There is clear evidence that, in addition to the three or four Aṣṭakās, another offering was made in the middle of the rains, perhaps in the month of Prauṣṭhapada: it is stated to be intended to be like the Anvaṣṭakya offering or the Pārvaṇa Çrāddha: there is the same dispute as to the nature of the offering: flesh is necessary if at all possible, but one authority calls it out and out a vegetable Aṣṭakā. This provision and the tendency, as we have seen, to make the offerings simple are due doubtless to the fact that they are obligatory offerings, which could not be omitted and which therefore must often be simple.³

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³ AGS. ii. 5. 9; ÇGS. iii. 3. 13; HGS. ii. 13. 3; PGS. iii. 3. 13 (Çākāṣṭakā).

§ 3. The Offerings to the Dead in the Çrauta Ritual

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In the Çrauta ritual a leading place in the cult of the dead is taken by the Piṇḍapitṛyajña,⁴ which should be offered after midday of the day of new moon. The sacrifice must take place in the southern fire, which is that appropriate to the Fathers, and the regular procedure of such offerings is followed: the sacred cord is to be worn over the right shoulder, not the left; all movements are from right to left, and recitations and acts take place once, not thrice; while in the normal offering movements are from south and west to north and east, in this offering they are in the reverse order, in so far that they must begin in the north and end in the south. In the libations the hand has the outer part turned downwards, the space between the thumb and the index finger is the space which serves for the passage of the oblations. Water is touched after each naming of the Fathers, and the offerer looks south, not north.¹ A pit is dug in the earth, south or west of the southern fire, with a formula to drive away the Asuras and the Rakṣases, and a firebrand from that fire is used as an additional mode of causing fear. The offering begins with two libations of boiled grain or butter to Soma with the Fathers and to Agni Kavyavāhana. Then the Fathers are directly approached : at the beginning, middle, and end of the furrow or pit water is poured, and the Fathers are invited to wash themselves.² Then Darbha grass is strewn in the pit, and from the remains of the rice pap and butter are made three lumps of food, or according to some authorities four, which are laid down in the pit on the places on which the water was formerly poured. In each case the Fathers are hailed by name if they are known as the father, grandfather, and greatgrandfather of the offerer; if the father of the offerer is still alive, various varieties of procedure are mentioned.³ The Fathers are invited to delight themselves : the offerer turns his back—doubtless to avoid too close contact, not that they may be unencumbered by his presence,⁴ and remains with averted head, until he is breathless or the food is cold : he then turns round to the lumps, says, ‘The Fathers have delighted themselves’, and pours water on the lumps, adds salve and some pieces of wool—or if over fifty, hair from his arm or breast—and invites the Fathers to wash, anoint, and clothe ⁵ themselves. He may also smell, if he desires a son, the remains of the pot. The Fathers are then honoured, and the Adhvaryu, looking south-east, and pushing away the lumps, bids them depart, pays reverence to the southern and the Gārhapatya fires, for the removal of all sin against heaven and earth. If the wife of the offerer wishes a son, then she eats the middle lump as in the domestic ritual : the other two may be thrown into fire or water, or eaten by prescribed persons.

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⁴ ApÇS. i. 7–10; KÇS. iv. 1; AÇS. ii. 6, 7; ÇÇS. iv. 3–5; Donner, *Piṇḍapitṛyajña* (Berlin, 1870); Caland, *Todtenverehrung*, pp. 3 ff.; *Todtengebräuche*, pp. 172, 173.

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¹ Other distinctions in offerings to the dead are the use of sesame in place of barley, of folded grass instead of straight stalks for the strew, of black not red victims, the use of old worn-out things, and the turning south with hairy side downwards, not east with hair upwards, of skins, doubtless to attract the spirits to take up their place therein.

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² Cf. Kleidamos in Athenaios, ix. p. 410.

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³ Weber, *Ind. Stud.* x. 82, n. 1.

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⁴ This is the Indian view; Caland, *Altind. Ahnenkult*, p. 180.

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⁵ Possibly the idea of the Fathers clothed only in their hair (Petavatthu, i. 10. 2) may here be present ; Oldenberg (*Rel. des Veda*², p. 552) insists on taking all offerings of hair as redemptions of self. But it is enough to recognize that a hair offering brings the living into close communion with the dead as is shown in many of the usages. Cf. Wilken, *Rev. Col. Int.* iii. 225 ff. ; iv. 345 ff. ; Frazer, *Magic Art*, i. 28 ff. ; Gruppe, *Griech. Myth.*, p. 913 ; Cook, *Zeus*, i. 23, 24 ; Samter, *Geburt, Hochzeit und Tod*, pp. 179 ff. ; *ERE.* iv. 431 ff. Cf. above, p. 428, n. 5. Disguise is an inadequate motive.

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The second great Çrauta offering is that of the Pitṛyajña, or Mahāpitṛyajña, which takes place on the afternoon of the second day of the Sākamedhas, the third of the four-month offerings.¹ The recipients of offerings are the Fathers with Soma, or Soma with the Fathers, the Fathers who sit on the strew, and the Fathers burned by Agni, while some add Yama with or without the Aṅgirases. The offerings to the three sets of Fathers are a cake, grains, and the offering of meal pap mixed in the milk of the cow, which has lost its own calf, and which has been given another to bring up. The sacrifice is conducted within a hut erected south of the southern fire, in which is made an altar with its orientation based on the intermediate points, on which the southern fire is placed. The technical terms of the offering for the Fathers *oṁ svadhā*, *astu svadhā*, *svadhā namaḥ*, replace those used for the gods. An offering for Kavyavāhana is substituted for the usual Sviṣṭakṛt offering at the end of a sacrifice. Washing water is poured out for the Fathers, and lumps are placed at the south-east and west corners of the altar, but the names, not of the latest but of the more distant Fathers, are uttered, the sixth, fifth, and fourth respectively. On the northern side the offerer wipes his hands and says, ‘Here, O Fathers, do ye delight yourselves’, and then all leave the hut, placing the sacred cord over the left shoulder, and adore the Āhavanīya fire, and then the Gārhapatya. They then return to the hut, altering the position of their cords: the offerer declares that the Fathers have delighted themselves and offers them reverence in the shape of six payings of homage.

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¹ The parallel of the winter All-souls festival of Europe; Caland, *Todtenverehrung*, pp. 78 ff.

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The similarity of the domestic and the Çrauta ritual in the case of the offerings to the dead is most marked, indeed more clearly so than in the case of the offerings to the gods, where the presence of the three fires led the Brahmans to constant elaboration of the rites in which they were interested, until they bore but faint similarity to the rites of the householder. In the case of the offerings to the dead, however, the southern fire is the only fire of consequence: the performances of the sacrificer and the priest in the other fires are purely formal, mainly devices to give them something to do, when the Fathers were presumed in spiritual presence to be eating the offerings from which, it is clear, they were deemed to extract the vital heat.

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The very clear differences between the form of the worship of the gods and the reverence paid to the dead² indicate beyond possibility of doubt that the attitude of the living to the dead differed in a marked degree from their attitude towards the gods, a fact which, so far as it goes, is doubtless evidence against the view that the worship of the gods sprang from the worship of men who had died. It is clear, however, that before the period of the Rigveda the tendance of the dead, the giving of gifts to them to use in the life to come, had developed so as to present the definite view that the dead were possessed of great powers, and were in many respects as important to their descendants from the point of view of conferring boons as the gods themselves. It is a question of great interest, but one which is insoluble by any evidence available, whether we are to assume that in the Indo-European period the conception of the divine dead had been developed: there is no evidence of any value to show that it had: we may safely assume that, as even in palaeolithic times in Europe, the dead were buried with due honour and gifts made to them, but the development of divinity may lie within the period of development of the several nations.¹

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² Stengel (*Opferbräuche*, pp. 127 ff.) shows in Greek religion the distinction of worship of the dead, and that of even the chthonian gods; see also Farnell’s distinction of tendance and worship, *Hibbert Journal*, 1909, p. 417.

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¹ Cf. MacCulloch, *Rel. of Anc. Celts*, pp. 165 ff.; Farnell, *Greece and Babylon*, pp. 208 ff., where stress is laid on the absence of any ancestor worship, so far as yet is known, in Babylonian religion. Hence the cult (assumed as Indo-European by Moulton, *Early Zoroastrianism*, p. 262; Feist, *Kultur der Indogermanen*, pp. 327, 328) cannot safely be postulated. In the Greek area matters are complicated by the existence (as shown in the Hagia Triada sarkophagos) of a pre-Hellenic reverence of ancestors perhaps already as divine. For other evidence of the far from universal character of the belief see Hopkins, *Origin of Religion*, pp. 80–2; Warde Fowler, *Roman Ideas of Deity*, pp. 22 f.; Cumont, *After-Life in Roman Paganism*, pp. 60 ff.

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