The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c41.s6.1

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.