The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c41.s6.12

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.