Vedic Mythology c9.s1.6

c9.s1.6

§ 72. The Soul. — Fire or the grave are believed to destroy the body only. But the real personality of the deceased is regarded as imperishable. This Vedic conception is based on the primitive belief that the soul was capable of separation from the body, even during unconsciousness, and of continued existence after death. Thus in a whole hymn (10, 58), the soul (*manas*) of one who is lying apparently dead is besought to return from the distance where it is wandering. There is no indication in the Vedas of the later doctrine of transmigration; but in a Brāhmaṇa the statement occurs that those who do not perform rites with correct knowledge, are born again after their decease and repeatedly become the food of death (ŚB. 10, 4, 3¹⁰). Besides *prāṇa*, ‘respiration’, and *ātman*, ‘breath’ (several times the express parallel of *vāta*, ‘wind’), the usual terms denoting the animating principle are *asu*, ‘spirit’, expressing physical vitality (1, 113¹⁶. 140⁸), even of animals (AB. 2, 6), and *manas*, ‘soul’, as the seat of thought and emotion, which already in the RV. (8, 89⁵) seems to be regarded as dwelling in the heart (*hṛd*)¹. Many passages, especially in the AV., show that life and death depend on the continuance or departure of *asu* or *manas*; and the terms *asunīti*, *asunīta*, ‘spirit-leading’ refer to the conduct by Agni of the souls of the dead on the path between this and the other world (10, 15⁴. 16²)². Funeral ritual texts never invoke the *asu* or *manas* of the deceased, but only the individual himself as ‘father’, ‘grandfather’, and so forth. Hence the soul is not a mere shadow, but is regarded as retaining its personal identity. Though men obtain immortality only after parting from the body (ŚB. 10, 4, 3⁹), the corpse plays an important part in the myth of the future state, which is corporeal. For the body shares in the existence of the other world (10, 16⁵; AV. 18, 2²⁶). A body, however, from which all imperfections are absent (AV. 6, 120³), can hardly have been regarded as a gross material body, but rather as one refined by the power of Agni (cp. 10, 16⁶), something like the ‘subtile’ body of later Indian speculation. An indication of the importance of the corpse in connexion with the future life, is the fact that the loss of a dead man’s bones, which according to the Sūtras were collected after cremation, was a severe punishment (ŚB. 11, 6, 3¹¹; 14, 6, 9²⁸). In one passage of the RV. (10, 16³) the eye of the dead man is called upon to go to the sun and his breath (*ātmā*) to the wind. But this notion, occurring in the midst of verses which refer to Agni as conducting the deceased to the other world, can only be an incidental fancy, suggested perhaps by the speculations about Puruṣa (10, 90¹³), where the eye of the latter becomes the sun and his breath the wind. In the same passage (also in 10, 58⁷) the soul is spoken of as going to the waters or the plants, a conception which perhaps contains the germ of the theory of metempsychosis³.