Soon after his birth his mother, who was carrying him in her arms up a mountain, accidentally let him fall over a precipice, and on descending in great agony of mind, expecting to find her baby dashed to pieces on the rock beneath, she found to her amazement and delight that the boy was unhurt, and the rock shivered to atoms by contact with his body.

Karṇa, too, another of the Mahā-bhārata heroes (also son of Kunti by the Sun-god), is greatly revered, and often cited in proverbial expressions, as a model of liberality, chivalrous honour, and self-sacrificing generosity. I saw one or two images of him in Southern India, but met with no shrines dedicated to his worship.

Clearly the hero-worship of India is subject to constant changes and fluctuations. Worshippers are capricious; great warriors, great saints, and great sages have their day and find themselves gradually pushed into the background, while their places are taken by rival warriors, saints, and sages who claim to be still greater1.

1 That man-worship is not confined to India may be proved by numerous examples drawn from all countries. In Africa the King of Loango is honoured as a god. His person is so sacred that no one is allowed to see him eat. In Peru a particular Inca was adored as a god during his lifetime. In New Zealand the warrior chief, Hongi, was called a god by his followers. At the Society Islands, King Tamatoa was worshipped, and in the Marquesas there are several men named atua believed to possess the power of gods. At Tahiti the king and queen were once held so sacred that the sounds forming their names could not be used for ordinary words. See 'Origin of Civilization,' by Sir J. Lubbock, p. 355.

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CHAPTER XI.

Death, Funeral Rites, and Ancestor-worship.

IN the two preceding chapters we have had occasion to state incidentally the Hindu doctrine in regard to the spirits of the dead. We have seen that they are supposed to pass into one or other of two very different conditions. They may be degraded to the state of evil demons or elevated to the position of divinities1. In the former case they are rather feared and propitiated than worshipped; in the latter they are rather reverenced and worshipped than propitiated. In the present chapter I have to point out how far this varying condition of deceased persons depends on the performance of funeral and ancestral rites by living relatives and descendants.

Of all forms of religious devotion homage to dead relations is the most widely extended2. It forms a part of nearly all religions, and is an element in the creed of nearly every race 3. Perhaps the one exception is Protestant Christianity. The Roman Catholic Church, as is well known, teaches that supplications and prayers may avail to improve the condition of departed spirits in purgatory. Not only therefore does it

1 In the same way among the Romans some souls of the dead were good, pure, and bright, and therefore called Manes; while others, called Larvæ and Lemures, wandered about as unquiet ghosts, and were often regarded as evil spirits. Compare also the Roman ideas respecting the Penates. With regard to the ideas prevalent among the Greeks, the following passages bear on the existence of the yuxý after death as an edwλov in Hades: Il. xxiii. 72, 104; Od. xi. 213, 476; xx. 355; xxiv. 14. 2 I refer any one who doubts this fact to Mr. E. B. Tylor's 'Primitive Culture,' vol. ii. chap. xviii.

3 The Bishop of Madagascar stated not long ago, that when he had to descend a dangerous stream in that island, the boatmen made offerings to the spirits of their ancestors before attempting to shoot the rapids.

permit special masses to be offered for the souls of deceased relations, it introduces a prayer for the dead into the regular daily mass 1.

According to the Protestant creed, on the other hand, the condition of the dead is irrevocably fixed. To think of ameliorating it by human intercession is nothing short of heresy. Nor is it customary to perpetuate by any kind of act, periodically repeated, the memory of one's nearest and dearest relatives. It is no doubt true that tombs are occasionally visited, and perhaps in the case of royal personages memorial services may be performed; and we have lately been informed, on the authority of an eminent Bishop 2, that the Church of England does not condemn special services for the spirits of the dead 3.

It is also true that every respectable man who has had a respectable father or mother will be careful to reverence their memory, but I question whether the same man ever feels it his duty to bestow a single reverential thought on either of

1 Our prayer for the Church militant has, I believe, taken the place of this. In some Roman Catholic countries it is customary to exhume skeletons at intervals of several years, and to place their skulls in a small chapel adjoining the parish-church. This chapel is in German Switzerland called the Schädel-haus, 'Skull-house,' and is used as an oratory where people pray for their dead relations and friends.

2 According to the Bishop of Peterborough, the belief was undoubtedly general in the early Church that the souls of the faithful, though free from all suffering, were capable, while awaiting their final consummation and bliss, of a progress in holiness and happiness; and that prayers for such progress might lawfully be made in their behalf. Accordingly, prayers for 'the rest and refreshment of the departed' abound in the early liturgies of the Church. See the Bishop's letter to the Rev. J. Mason's parishioners who complained of Mr. Mason's having given notice that he intended celebrating the Holy Communion for the repose of Dr. Pusey's soul.

3 All Saints' Day is observed in the Church of England as well as in the Church of Rome. In some Roman Catholic countries great feasting takes place on this day, and the souls of the dead are supposed to join in the festivities and consume the essence of the food before it is eaten.

▲ The feeling seems to find vent in putting periodical advertisements in loving memory' in the obituary of the newspapers.

his departed grandfathers and grandmothers, and whether he would believe in the sanity of any one who was in the habit of offering periodical homage to his two great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers.

This neglect of one's ancestors, which seems to spring not so much from any want of sympathy with the departed as from an utter disbelief in any interconnexion between this world and the world of spirits, is by some regarded as a defect in our religious character and practice.

In Eastern countries, especially India and China, the opposite extreme generally prevails. We know that in India, every religious duty is magnified and intensified. There, to speak of mere reverence for the dead is a very inadequate expression. The constant periodical performance of commemorative obsequies is regarded in the light of a positive and peremptory obligation. It is the simple discharge of a solemn debt due to one's forefathers-a debt consisting not only in reverential homage, but in the performance of acts necessary to their support, happiness, and progress onward in the spirit-world. A man's deceased relatives, for at least three generations, are among his cherished divinities, and must be honoured by daily offerings and adoration, or a Nemesis of some kind is certain to overtake his living family.

Nothing, in fact, interested me more in what I saw of the religious practices of the Hindūs, and nothing seemed to me more worthy of note in comparing Hinduism with other religions, than the elaborate nature of its funeral rites and the extraordinary importance attached to these and to the subsequent ceremonies called Ŝrāddha.

And here at the outset it may be well to point out that the main object of a Hindū funeral is very different from that of European obsequial rites.

It is nothing less than the investiture of the departed spirit with an intermediate gross body-a peculiar frame interposed, as it were parenthetically, between the terres

trial gross body which has just been destroyed by fire, and the new terrestrial body which it is compelled ultimately to assume. The creation of such an intervenient frame-composed of gross elements, though less gross than those of earth becomes necessary, because the individualized spirit of man, after cremation of the terrestrial body, has nothing left to withhold it from re-absorption into the universal soul, except its incombustible subtle body, which, as composed of the subtle elements, is not only proof against the fire of the funeral pile, but is incapable of any sensations in the temporary heaven or temporary hell, through one or other of which every separate human spirit is forced to pass before returning to earth and becoming reinvested with a terrestrial gross body.

Were it not for this intermediate frame-believed to be created by the offerings made during the funeral ceremonies -the spirit would remain with its subtle body in the condition of an impure and unquiet ghost (preta) wandering about on the earth or in the air among demons and evil spirits, and condemned itself to become an evil spirit1. Its reception of the intervenient body converts it from a Preta or ghost into a Pitri or ancestor; but this does not satisfy all its needs. The new body it has received, though not so gross as that of earth, must be developed and supported. It must, if possible, be rescued from the fire of purgatory. It must be assisted onwards in its course from lower to higher worlds and back again to earth. And these results can only be accomplished by the ceremonies called Sraddha-ceremonies which may in some

1 It is curious that the Hindū notion of the restless state of the soul until the Śrāddha is performed agrees with the ancient classical superstition that the ghosts of the dead wandered about as long as their bodies remained unburied, and were not suffered to mingle with those of the other dead. See Od. xi. 54; Il. xxiii. 72; and cf. Æn. vi. 325; Lucan, i, ii; Eur. Hec. 30.