Pramāṇa · Search · About · API

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c41.s6: F. Cremation and Burial

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c41.s6

Language
English

F. Cremation and Burial

v2.c41.s6.1

The view that cremation was a distinctively Indo-European form of disposal of the dead cannot be supported by any evidence of value. There is abundant proof that burial is at least as ancient a method, and, indeed, it is possible to hold that it was Indo-European, while burning was introduced after that period among the different peoples either independently or by borrowing. The Vedic evidence, as has been shown, proves that burial was early; Herodotos⁶ ascribes the usage to the Persians, while the Magoi, possibly by religious conservatism, preserved the method of exposure; burial he also assigns to the Iranian Scythians.¹ In the case of Greece the existence of a pre-Hellenic population which practised burial renders the evidence² specially obscure, but it is important that in the earliest Athenian cemeteries in the ‘dipylon’ graves of the geometric period of art cremation is very rare. The evidence from Italy shows burials preceding cremations in the oldest cemeteries, and even if the people of the terremare, perhaps in part the ancestors of the Latins, were addicted to burning,³ it is impossible to assume that burial was in Italy derived from the non-Indo-European population. The laws of the Ten Tables⁴ forbade the burial or burning of a dead man within the city, and there is a remarkable provision in an old law of the regal period which provides for the saving of the embryo in the case of the burial of a pregnant woman.⁵ That burial was the more ancient custom is suggested strongly by the fact that conservative families like the Cornelii persisted in burying their dead until the time of the Dictator Sulla, whose cremation was dictated by political reasons. Archaeological evidence in the lands held by the Slavs, Teutons, and Celts establishes the priority of burial, and it is not plausible to suppose that the appearance of burning there meant the advent of a new race. Cremation is recorded for the Celts by Caesar⁶ and the Hallstatt cemetery; for the Teutons by Tacitus,⁷ and later evidence establishes it for the Slavs and Lithuanians. All the evidence, therefore, is compatible with the view that burning was a rite introduced, comparatively late in some cases, in the separate life of the Indo-European peoples.

v2.c41.s6.2

⁶ i. 140. Cf. C. Clemen, *Die griechischen und lateinischen Nachrichten über die persische Religion*, pp. 201 ff.

v2.c41.s6.3

¹ iv. 71.

v2.c41.s6.4

² See *e. g.* Zehetmaier, *Leichenverbrennung und Leichenbestattung im alten Hellas*. The lake dwellers of Europe first buried, then burned their dead, and it has been suggested that cremation is a specific usage of broad-headed peoples (CAH. i. 73).

v2.c41.s6.5

³ Peet, *Stone and Bronze Ages in Italy*, p. 370; von Duhn, *Rückblick auf die Gräberforschung* (Heidelberg, 1911), p. 18; Modestov, *Introduction à l'histoire romaine* (Paris, 1907), p. 107; cf. Peake, *The Bronze Age and the Celtic World*, pp. 122, 131, 163; CAH. i. 74, 108, 110, where they are taken as Alpine in race; Indo-European, CAH. ii. 569.

v2.c41.s6.6

⁴ x. 1. Cf. x. 8 f.; Cicero, *Leg.* ii. 22; Pliny, *N. H.* vii. 187.

v2.c41.s6.7

⁵ *Dig.* xi. 8. 2 (Bruns, *Fontes Iuris Romani*⁶, p. 11). Similar instructions are given in India before cremation; Baudhāyana Pitṛmedha Sūtra, ii. 15; Vaikhānasa Gṛhya Sūtra, vii. 4.

v2.c41.s6.8

⁶ *B.G.* vi. 19; Pomponius Mela, iii. 19. Cf. MacBain, *Celtic Mythology and Religion*, pp. 235 ff.; CAH. ii. 592 ff.

v2.c41.s6.9

⁷ *Germ.* 27.

v2.c41.s6.10

It is, however, extremely difficult to arrive at any theory establishing the period when or the place whence the new practice came to be disseminated. The theory of Ridgeway⁸ which makes the Celts protagonists in the matter is most implausible in the form in which he has stated it, and there is no conclusive reason to assume that the use must have been started by one only of the Indo-European peoples. Whether the motive of burning was due to a change in the aspect in which men regarded the dead, or arose from practical considerations, such as those affecting the advance of a people who could not continue to bury their dead and to cherish them in their ancestral homes, there is no special reason to suppose that only one Indo-European people invented it. The Greeks invading Hellas, and the Indians invading India, may have been moved by similar motives independently, or again in one case one, in another yet a different, motive may have been operative, and it is not necessary to seek any theory which will explain all cases. Borrowing from any non-Indo-European source is implausible, in the absence of any clear evidence of the prevalence of the rite among peoples by whom the Indo-Europeans could have been influenced.

v2.c41.s6.11

⁸ *Early Age of Greece*, i. chap. vii. Peake (*The Bronze Age and the Celtic World*, pp. 101 ff.) does not adopt this theory. Cf. CAH. ii. 473 ff.

v2.c41.s6.12

The motives which may have influenced burning are many, apart from the necessities or convenience of invaders. The removal of a dangerous object is obviously one possibility; the view that it was intended to facilitate the celestial existence of the soul by ridding it of the encumbrance of the body has been strongly supported,¹ but, as we have seen, is not borne out by any Vedic evidence. Paton² adopts the suggestion of E. Meyer³ that cremation existed in Indo-European times alongside with burial, but that it was performed originally only in the case of heroes, chiefs or kings, who were believed to partake of the divine nature and, therefore, were returned by fire to the celestial regions. In support of this is adduced the fact that in Egypt⁴ the ideas of the future of the king gradually became applied to the ordinary people, as did cremation in Greece. But the evidence for this distinction is inadequate; in India there is nothing of the kind, the fact that children under two years of age were not cremated, adduced by Paton, is irrelevant, for ascetics shared the same fate, and there is no trace of the caste differentiation in this regard which would be necessary on the theory of a distinction based on an aristocratic practice. It is not the case that the distinction can be seen in Homer,⁵ and the evidence of Caesar and Tacitus regarding the Celts and the Teutons says nothing of a distinction between the treatment of the great and the mere clansmen.

v2.c41.s6.13

¹ Cf. Sophus Müller, *Nord. Altertumskunde*, i. 363 ff.; Scheftelowitz, *Archiv f. Religionswissenschaft*, xix. 219 f., who connects it with the belief in a star destiny for the soul. His argument that, if the use is apotropaic, the burning of utensils, &c., is meaningless, is clearly mistaken. A banned soul might return for his own, and his connexion with them has rendered their retention unwise.

v2.c41.s6.14

² *Spiritism*, p. 129.

v2.c41.s6.15

³ *Gesch. des Alt.*² ii. 771.

v2.c41.s6.16

⁴ See e.g. J. H. Breasted, *Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt*, pp. 103, 256; *Cambridge Ancient History*, i. 350 f.

v2.c41.s6.17

⁵ Cf. Lang, *Homer and his Age*, p. 99; Keith, JRAS. 1912, p. 473, n. The ethnic question discussed by me there still remains unsolved. Leaf (*Homer and History*, p. 37) adopts the impossible view that the Greek mainland was occupied by neolithic peoples speaking a Greek dialect of which Arcadian may be a descendant, who were first dominated over by Minoan and next by Hellenic Achaeans; Peake (*The Bronze Age and the Celtic World*, chap. ix) makes the mainland population of eastern Alpine, the Cretan of Mediterranean (pp. 28 ff.) stock, while the Minoan overlords are 'Prospectors', of a blend of Mediterranean and eastern Alpine stocks, who may be of Sumerian origin and akin to the Etruscans. The Achaeans are a small body of intrusive Nordics, while no place is left for an earlier Greek-speaking population. Evans again (JHS. xxxii. 281 ff.), by insisting on the continuity of Minoan and Mycenaean culture, brings down any real influence of the Hellenic influx to the period of dipylon culture, which is clearly too late, and has provoked the equally impossible suggestion (T. W. Allen, JHS. xxxiii. 115) that the Minoans must have been Achaeans. It is much more probable that early Greeks took a substantial part in developing Mycenaean civilization under Minoan influence, and that the epic reflects this Greek civilization, not memories of the Minoan epic. See against G. Murray's traditionalist theory of the *Iliad*, J. T. Sheppard's able analysis, *The Pattern of the Iliad* (1922); Bury, CAH. ii. 502 ff.

v2.c41.s6.18

Definite proof of the Indo-European character of burial of the dead would be afforded if it were possible to accept as proved Peake's⁶ identification of them with the Kurgan people of the steppes east of the Dnieper, who certainly buried their dead in a contracted position, the skeletons found being thickly covered with red ochre, a custom which is attested as early as Aurignacian times. The evidence, as has been mentioned, for this theory is inadequate to establish it, but it may be noted that the Vedic Indians appear to have agreed with these people in their tendency to simplicity and economy in regard to the offerings deposited with the dead, for the Vedic offerings are, as we have seen, strictly limited in quantity and quality. The contracted position of the dead may have been induced by the desire to reproduce the character of a foetus, awaiting new birth in the world to come, and the idea of rebirth as an embryo is conspicuous in the Vedic Dīkṣā ceremonial. The barrow may be compared with the Vedic memorial mound.¹ It might further be conjectured that the use of burning was influenced by the practice of the neighbouring peoples of Tripolye culture² who regularly, if not invariably burned their dead. But we have no real means of arriving at any valid conclusion.

v2.c41.s6.19

⁶ *The Bronze Age and the Celtic World*, pp. 67 ff.; cf. Minns, *Scythians and Greeks*, pp. 142 ff.; Rostovtzeff, *Journal des Savants*, 1920, pp. 60, 109 ff.

v2.c41.s6.20

⁷ Cf. the blood-offerings for the dead, to strengthen their life; Paton, *Spiritism*, pp. 72 f., 140 f.

v2.c41.s6.21

¹ This is not to be high nor too large, according to the ritual texts (cf. Megasthenes in Strabo, xv. 54), negativeng any idea of a great chamber (cf. Bloch and Hillebrandt's view of RV. x. 18. 13); see Caland, *Versl. en Meded. der Kon. Akad. v. Wet. te Amsterdam*, 4e R., dl. xi. 378 ff.; *Archiv f. Religionswissenschaft*, xviii. 482.

v2.c41.s6.22

² Minns, *op. cit.*, pp. 133 ff.; Peake, *op. cit.*, pp. 64 f.; *CAH.* i. 80 ff.

Linked texts (4)