It is strange, and really more than strange, that not only should this important and prominent side of the ancient religion of the Hindus have been ignored, but that of late its very existence should have been doubted. I feel obliged, therefore, to add a few words in support of what I have said just now of the supreme importance of this belief in and this worship of ancestral spirits in India from the most ancient to the most modern times. Mr. Herbert Spencer, who has done so much in calling attention to ancestorship as a natural ingredient of religion among all savage nations, declares in the most emphatic manner,[277] "that he has seen it implied, that he has heard it in conversation, and that he now has it before him in print, that no Indo-European or Semitic nation, so far as we know, seems to have made a religion of the worship of the dead." I do not doubt his words, but I think that on so important a point, Mr. Herbert Spencer ought to have named his authorities. It seems to me almost impossible that anybody who has ever opened a book on India should have made such a statement. There are hymns in the Rig-Veda addressed to the Fathers. There are full descriptions of the worship due to the Fathers in the Brâhmanas and Sûtras. The epic poems, the law books, the Purânas, all are brimful of allusions to ancestral offerings. The whole social fabric of India, with its laws of inheritance and marriage,[278] rests on a belief in the Manes—and yet we are told that no Indo-European nation seems to have made a religion of the worship of the dead.
The Persians had their Fravashis, the Greeks their εἴδωλα, or rather their θεοὶ πατρῷοι and their δαἱμονες,
ὲσθλοὶ, ὲπιχθόνιοι, φὑλακες θνητῶν ὰνθρὡπων;
ὁἴ ῥα φυλἁσσουσἱν τε δἱκας καὶ σχἑτλια ἔργα,
ὴἑρα ἑσσἁμενοι πἁντη φοιτῶντες ὲπ' αἷαν,
πλουτοδόται (Hesiodi Opera et Dies, vv. 122-126);[279]
while among the Romans the Lares familiares and the Divi Manes were worshipped more zealously than any other gods.[280] Manu goes so far as to tell us in one place (III. 203): "An oblation by Brâhmans to their ancestor transcends an oblation to the deities;" and yet we are told that no Indo-European nation seems to have made a religion of the worship of the dead.
Such things ought really not to be, if there is to be any progress in historical research, and I cannot help thinking that what Mr. Herbert Spencer meant was probably no more than that some scholars did not admit that the worship of the dead formed the whole of the religion of any of the Indo-European nations. That, no doubt, is perfectly true, but it would be equally true, I believe, of almost any other religion. And on this point again the students of anthropology will learn more, I believe, from the Veda than from any other book.
In the Veda the Pitris, or fathers, are invoked together with the Devas, or gods, but they are not confounded with them. The Devas never become Pitris, and though such adjectives as deva are sometimes applied to the Pitris, and they are raised to the rank of the older classes of Devas (Manu III. 192, 284, Yâgñavalkya I. 268), it is easy to see that the Pitris and Devas had each their independent origin, and that they represent two totally distinct phases of the human mind in the creation of its objects of worship. This is a lesson which ought never to be forgotten.
We read in the Rig-Veda, VI. 52, 4: "May the rising Dawns protect me, may the flowing Rivers protect me, may the firm Mountains protect me, may the Fathers protect me at this invocation of the gods." Here nothing can be clearer than the separate existence of the Fathers, apart from the Dawns, the Rivers, and the Mountains, though they are included in one common Devahûti, however, or invocation of the gods.
We must distinguish, however, from the very first, between two classes, or rather between two concepts of Fathers, the one comprising the distant, half-forgotten, and almost mythical ancestors of certain families or of what would have been to the poets of the Veda, the whole human race, the other consisting of the fathers who had but lately departed, and who were still, as it were, personally remembered and revered.
The old ancestors in general approach more nearly to the gods. They are often represented as having gone to the abode of Yama, the ruler of the departed, and to live there in company with some of the Devas (Rig-Veda VII. 76, 4, devânâm sadhamâdah; Rig-Veda X. 16, 1, devânâm vasanîh).
We sometimes read of the great-grandfathers being in heaven, the grandfathers in the sky, the fathers on the earth, the first in company with the Âdityas, the second with the Rudras, the last with the Vasus. All these are individual poetical conceptions.[281]