CHAPTER IX.

THE RIG-VEDA: EARLY CULTURE.

I. No one who has read at all attentively the many Rig-Veda hymns and passages quoted in the preceding chapters but will have formed a more or less distinct picture of the civilization and culture of those early times, of the intellectual and moral attainments of those who could think and sing thus. Out of things said or implied, mentioned directly or in the form of similes, the picture, stroke by stroke, must have grown into a goodly general sketch, conjuring up before us much the same phases of existence as now go to make up human life: same in substance, different in garb; same in kind, different in degree. Princes and warriors and priests,-battles and rural peace,-things of the farm, the field, and the forest, and the various crafts of men,-all contribute their quota to that sketch. We must now attempt to fill it in with more life-like details, more finished lights and shades-still from the same exhaustless mine, the Aryan book of books-the RigVeda.

2. Philosophers of a gloomy turn have often said that the most important act of life is death, as it is

what we came into the world for.

Certain it is that one of the first things we want to know about a race or nation is—what views it held upon that ever absorbing, because ever mysterious, subject, and that our judgment of that race or nation greatly depends on what we learn of those views and of the honors it paid to its dead, its treatment of their remains and the ceremonies observed in connection therewith. This being the case, we shall not have to be ashamed of our early Aryan ancestors. For not many funeral rituals can vie in beauty and significance with that which we can reconstruct from their sacred books. The tenth book of the Rig-Veda contains several hymns which could have served no other purpose, and though it is avowedly a late book, the ground matter of such parts as this must be of necessity very ancient, for the conceptions about death and future life are always among a race's oldest. From the merest perusal of the so-called funeral hymns, we see that the Âryas of the Sapta Sindhavah (and of course their later descendants), though they had a wholesome love of life and earnestly prayed that their dear ones and themselves might be spared to the full natural span of “a hundred winters," yet had no morbid terror of death, and, while keeping the departed in honor and loving remembrance, certainly did not mourn as those without hope. Their hope was that those who had gone before would lead a happy and glorified existence with the ancient Fathers of the race and their own ancestors down to the immediately preceding generation, happily waiting to be joined by their own descendants,

"feasting with the gods," in the realm of good King Yama. Thither their spirits were conveyed on the fiery pinions of the Messenger Agni, whose consuming touch had power only over the grosser, earthborn parts. This is the later form of funeral, which has endured among Brahmanic Hindus to this day, and the texts which accompany it we have no trouble in distinguishing from others, that could have fitted only a rite of burial, not of cremation. These are contained in the famous hymn X., 18, one of the most beautiful of its kind in any time or country. It is evident that burial was the earlier form. The words are so suggestive of the acts performed that it is easy to imagine, from them alone, the sacred action as it proceeds. The dead is laid on the ground, on a consecrated spot. His bow is in his hand; his widow sits by him, near the head. Relatives and friends stand in a wide circle. The officiating priest places a stone at some distance from the body, within the circle; it is the dividing bourne, beyond which the living may not pass, and which MRITYU, Death, is invited to respect. As he does this the priest speaks:

"1. Depart, O Death, go thy way-the path which is thine own, far removed from that of the gods. To thee I speak, that hast eyes, hast ears harm not our children, not our men.

Then turning to the assembled mourners:

"2. Ye who came hither in Death's footsteps, yourselves possessed of life, increasing in wealth of treasure and of progeny, be ye in spirit pure and holy !-3. Divided are the living from the dead. Propitious was our sacrifice this day, and we shall hence depart to dance and to

be merry, for still is life our own.-4. This bourne I set, that of the living none may haste to yonder goal; theirs be the full-prest measure of a hundred autumns, and may this rock keep Death away from them.-5. As days on days still follow in succession, and season closely follows season, nor comes the later before the earlier, so shape their lives, Creator.-6. Fulfil your term of years, and live to a ripe old age, as many as are here, running your race in turn, and may Tvashtar, the skilful Maker, give you length of days."

Only after this blessing on the living has been pronounced, do the rites really begin. The women enter the consecrated precinct and pour oils and butter on the corpse, to the following text.

"7. These women here, not widows, wives of noble husbands, and mothers, let them first approach with unguents and with clarified butter; tearless, not sorrowing, festally attired, let them go up to the dwelling (of the dead)."

Here the brother of the deceased, as his representative, or, in default of a brother, an adopted son, a pupil, or an old servant, takes the widow by the hand, saying:

His breath is gone, by

"8. Arise, O woman, to the world of life. whom thou liest,-who took thy hand once and espoused thee; thy wedlock with him now is ended." 1

Then the same person takes the bow out of the lifeless hand, with the words:

It is these two verses-7 and 8—which have acquired such great celebrity and importance, as affording conclusive proof that the Vedas do not yield any precedent and authority for widow-burning, but quite and expressly the contrary. The sense of verse 7 has been perverted by the change of two letters in one word, and some slighter discrepancies in the interpretation of another word. But those two letters really have to answer for the horrors of the suttee.

"9. His bow I take from the hand of the dead, that it may be to us for help, and strength, and fame. Stay thou yonder; we here, as doughty men, will, in battle, smite the foe."

Now the actual interment begins; the body is laid in the ground, the earth is shovelled over it, and a mound erected, the "house of death." As the different acts are performed, the priest speaks the accompanying words:

10. Hie thee to Earth, the Mother; to the wide-spread, blessed Earth; to the pious man she is a maiden soft as wool; may she guard thee from evil.—11. Open wide, O Earth, oppress him not. Be gracious unto him; shelter him kindly, cover him, Earth, even as a mother covers her infant with her garment.-12. Now let the house of clay stand firm and steadfast, borne on a thousand pillars; may it ever be sprinkled with clarified butter, and be a shelter unto him for aye.-13. I have heaped up the earth around thee, and may this clod not hurt thee as I place it over thee. May the Fathers guard this house, and Yama prepare thee a dwelling in the world beyond."

3. The stern and sober spirit of this valediction, so healthily remote from idle sentiment and lament, yet not loveless withal, and breathing a simple faith, unmixed as yet with speculation, would alone point to the extreme antiquity of the rite it accompanies. When cremation was introduced, it became necessary to modify the ritual and adapt it to new texts. These are all contained in Book X., and are so suggestive as to require no commentary. Yet the hymn X., 18, was too old and sacred ever to be discarded; it was only broken up into parts, some being recited during or before-the cremation, and the others from verse 10 on, being reserved for the ceremony