The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c36.s1.1

v2.c36.s1.1

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