With similar ceremonies and declarations he next gives away to a Brahmana, a golden image of the deceased, or else a golden idol, or both. Afterwards he distributes other presents among Brahmanas for the greater honour of the deceased. Of course, all this can only be done by rich people.
The principal remaining ceremonies consist chiefly of the obsequies called sradhas. The first set of funeral ceremonies is adopted to effect, by means of oblations, the reimbodying of the soul of the deceased, after burning his corpse. The apparent scope of the second is to raise his shade from this world (where it would else, according to the notions of the Hindus, continue to roam among demons and evil spirits), up to heaven, and there deify him, as it were, among the manes of departed ancestors. For this end, a sradha should regularly be offered to the deceased on the day after mourning expires; twelve other sradhas singly to the deceased in twelve successive months: similar obsequies at the end of the third fortnight, and also in the sixth month, and in the twelfth; and the oblation called Sapindana, on the first anniversary of his decease. In most provinces the periods for these sixteen ceremonies, and for the concluding obsequies entitled Sapindana, are anticipated, and the whole is completed on the second or third day. After which they are again performed at the proper times, but in honour of the whole set of progenitors, instead of the deceased singly. The obsequies intended to raise the shade of the deceased to heaven are thus completed. Afterwards, a sradha is annually offered to him on the anniversary of his decease.
What we have just described, elaborate as it looks, is simply an abridgment of the long and complicated ceremonies attendant upon the funeral and after obsequies of a rich man among the Hindus, but it is enough for our purpose. It shows the vast importance attached to those obsequies, and enables us to understand the desire on the part of these Hindus to have children who will in a proper and acceptable manner carry out these proceedings. We have already quoted from the sacred books to show that a son was regarded as better able to perform those duties than any other relation, and that failing such offspring in the ordinary course of nature, it was obligatory upon the would be father to adopt one.
Dulaure and some other writers describe a variety of ceremonies which were taken part in by the women in order to procure the children who would satisfy the cravings of their husbands. It is probable that a good deal of what took place at the shrines of heathen goddesses in other lands, arose from this anxiety, and not altogether from a merely licentious habit of character and disposition. It has been said, as we may have already suggested perhaps, that the priests connected with some of the temples resorted to by childless women for the cure of their misfortune, were cunning enough to provide for what was wanted in a more practical way than by the simple performance of certain ceremonies, and that where the failure to produce children was due to some fault on the part of the husband, means were at hand by which the woman soon found herself in the desired condition. It is rather singular that something very similar was found among the Jewish women in the time of Ezekiel, as we have found in India; the Indian woman sacrificed her virginity at the shrine of the Lingam, and in the 16th chapter of the prophet’s book, verse 17, we read:—“Thou didst take also thy fair jewels of my gold, and didst make to thyself images of men, and didst commit whoredom with them.” The latter, however, was evidently of a very different character to the former, being nothing more or less than the impure worship of Priapus as carried on in the orgies of Osiris, Bacchus, and Adonis, the images of the Hebrew women being such as the Priapi used in those ceremonies; on no account must those foolish and filthy practices be confounded with that act of worship which men in primitively simple condition rendered to the agents employed in the act of generation, which was innocently regarded as only one of the operations of nature.
The moral of this part of the subject, and with which for the present we take leave of it, is this, that the Eastern, from his views of the future life, deems it absolutely necessary that he should leave offspring, either real or adopted, behind him, to carry out the obligations imposed by his religion, and that in order to attain in the possession of what is to him such a blessing, he is called upon to propitiate in every possible manner the physical agents and powers employed in the process,—hence the rise and practice of phallic worship.
THE END.
Footnotes:
[1] See Dudley’s Naology.
[2] Edin. Rev., 1870, p. 239.