Indian Philosophy v1.c8.s8.2

v1.c8.s8.2

The Vedic Aryans entered India in the pride of strength and joy of conquest. They loved life in its fullness. They therefore showed no great interest in the future of the soul. Life to them was bright and joyous, free from all the vexations of a fretful spirit. They were not enamoured of death. They wished for themselves and their posterity a life of a hundred autumns.² They had no special doctrines about life after death, though some vague conceptions about heaven and hell could not be avoided by reflective minds. Rebirth is still at a distance. The Vedic Aryans were convinced that death was not the end of things. After night, the day; after death, life. Beings who once had been, could never cease to be. They must exist somewhere, perhaps in the realm of the setting sun where Yama rules. The imagination of man with his shuddering fear of death had not yet made Yama into a terrible lord of vengeance. Yama and Yamī are the first mortals who entered the other world to lord over it. When a man dies he is supposed to reach Yama’s kingdom. Yama had found for us a place, a home which is not to be taken from us. When the body is thrown off, the soul becomes endowed with a shining spiritual form and goes to the abode of gods where Yama and the fathers live immortal. The dead are supposed to get to this paradise by passing over water and a bridge.¹ A reference to the paths of the fathers and the gods is found in x. 88. 15. This might be, as has been suggested, due to the distinction of the ways in which the smoke ascends in cremation and sacrifice. The distinction is yet in an undeveloped form.