Wendy Doniger Rig Veda on Death

Table Of Contents

CREATION
DEATH
THE ELEMENTS OF SACRIFICE
THE HORSE SACRIFICE
GODS OF THE SACRIFICE: AGNI AND SOMA
SOMA
INDRA
GODS OF THE STORM
SOLAR GODS
SKY AND EARTH
VARUNA
RUDRA AND VISNU
REALIA
WOMEN
INCANTATIONS AND SPELLS

DEATH

EVEN as the Rig Veda speculates in various contrasting, even conflicting ways about the process of creation, so too there is much variation in the speculations about death, and in the questions asked about death. There is evidence of different rituals – cremation (10.16) or burial (10.18), the latter also underlying the image of the ‘ house of clay’ in a hymn to Varuna (see 7.89). Several fates are suggested for the dead man: heaven (10.14), a new body (10.16), revival (10.58), reincarnation (10.16), and dispersal among various elements (10.16.3, 10.58). It is also evident that there is a wide range of people that the dead man may hope to join, wherever he goes (10.154), and so it is not surprising that different groups of people are addressed, even within a single hymn: the fathers or dead ancestors in heaven (10.14), the gods (10.16), particularly Yama (10.14, 10.135), the dead man (10.14, 10.135), the mourners (10.14.12 and 10.14.14, 10.18), mother earth and Death himself (10.18). Together, these hymns reveal a world in which death is regarded with great sadness but without terror, and life on earth is preciously clung to, but heaven is regarded as a gentle place, rich in friends and ritual nourishment, a world of light and renewal.

10.14   Yama and the Fathers

This funeral hymn centres upon Yama, king of the dead, the first mortal to have reached the other world and the path-maker for all who came after him. Verses 1 and 2 address the mourners and describe this ancient path; 4 and 5 invoke Yama to come to the funeral in order that he may lead the dead man to heaven. Verses 3 and 6 invoke famous ancestors already in the world beyond; 7, 8 and 10 speed the dead man on his way, and 9 speeds the evil spirits on their way. Yama and his two dogs are addressed in 11 and 12; these dogs are regarded (like many Vedic gods) as dangerous because they kill you (verses 10 and 12) but also as potentially benevolent, because they lead you to heaven (verse 11). Verses 13-15 call upon the priests to offer Soma¹ to Yama, and the final verse recapitulates the two main themes : the farewell to the dead man on the path of Yama, and the offerings of Soma and praise to Yama.

1 The one who has passed beyond along the great, steep straits,² spying out the path for many, the son of Viva- svan,³ the gatherer of men, King Yama – honour him with the oblation.

2 Yama was the first to find the way for us, this pasture that shall not be taken away.⁴ Where our ancient fathers passed beyond, there everyone who is born follows, each on his own path.

3 Matala⁵ made strong by the Kavyas, and Yama by the Angirases, and Brhaspati by the Rkvans – both those whom the gods made strong and those who strengthen the gods :⁶ some rejoice in the sacrificial call, others in the sacrificial drink.

4 Sit upon this strewn grass, O Yama, together with the Angirases, the fathers. Let the verses chanted by the poets carry you here. O King, rejoice in this oblation.

5 Come, Yama, with the Angirases worthy of sacrifice: rejoice here with the Vairupas,⁷ sitting on the sacred grass at this sacrifice. I will invoke Vivasvan, who is your father.

6 Our fathers, the Angirases, and the Navagvas, Atharvans, and Brhgus,⁷ all worthy of Soma – let us remain in favour with them, as they are worthy of sacrifice, and let them be helpful and kind.

7 [To the dead man :] Go forth, go forth on those ancient paths on which our ancient fathers passed beyond. There you shall see the two kings, Yama and Varuna, rejoicing in the sacrificial drink.⁶

8 Unite with the fathers, with Yama, with the rewards of your sacrifices and good deeds,⁸ in the highest heaven. Leaving behind all imperfections, go back home again;⁹ merge with a glorious body.

9 [To demons:] Go away, get away, crawl away from here. The fathers have prepared this place for him.¹⁰ Yama gives him a resting-place adorned by days, and waters, and nights.¹¹

10 [To the dead man :] Run on the right path, past the two brindled, four-eyed dogs, the sons of Sarama,¹² and then approach the fathers, who are easy to reach and who rejoice at the same feast as Yama.

11 Yama, give him over to your two guardian dogs, the four-eyed keepers of the path, who watch over men. O king, grant him happiness and health.

12 The two dark messengers of Yama with flaring nostrils wander among men, thirsting for the breath of life. Let them give back to us¹³ a life of happiness here and today, so that we may see the sun.

13 For Yama press the Soma; to Yama offer the oblation; to Yama goes the well-prepared sacrifice, with Agni as its messenger.

14 Offer to Yama the oblation rich in butter, and go forth.¹⁴ So may he intercede for us among the gods, so that we may live out a long life-span.¹⁵

15 Offer to Yama, to the king, the oblation most rich in honey. We bow down before the sages born in the ancient times, the ancient path-makers.

16 All through the three Soma days,¹⁶ he¹⁷ flies to the six broad spaces¹⁸ and the one great one. Tristubh, Gayatrï, the metres – all these are placed in Yama.

NOTES

1. Soma is the sacrificial drink pressed from the Soma plant; it is the ambrosial food offered to the gods to make them immortal.

2. These are the paths leading to the highest heaven, where Yama dwells ; they may be the watercourses at the end of the world.

3. A name of the sun, father of Yama.

4. The meaning is either that everyone gets to heaven or that, once there, you never leave (i.e. that there is no rebirth).

5. A name of a god or demi-god who appears only here in the Rig Veda.

6. This verse contrasts two groups of individuals to be encountered in the world beyond (an expansion of the ‘ancient fathers’ mentioned in the previous verse). Matali, Yama, and Brhaspati are here regarded as semi-divine figures, who are made strong by other gods and by the sacrificial drink, the Svadha, here – and elsewhere – a name for Soma. The Kavyas, Angirases, and Rkvans are families of ancient poets, priests, and singers who make the gods strong and who rejoice in the sacrificial call, the sound ‘Svaha’ that they make to call the gods and the fathers to receive the offering.

7. Other priestly clans related to the Angirases.

8. Not merely the dead man’s own good deeds but those which are done on his behalf in the funeral ceremonies.

9. The dead man takes on a new, perfect body in place of the old one burnt in the fire (see 10.16); he ‘goes back home’ to heaven or to earth.

10. The flesh-eating ghouls who live in the burning-ground may contest the dead man’s right to enter the world of heaven, or perhaps, as in later Hinduism, they merely wish to eat the corpse.

11. The waters may be the rains (that fall from heaven) or the cool, refreshing waters that are so often described as a feature of heaven, where the days and nights rotate as on earth. Yet another possible interpretation of the ‘resting-place’ would be a burning- place on earth, purified by water.

12. Yama’s two dogs are the descendants of Sarama, the bitch of Indra (cf. 10.108), who guard the doorway to the other world, like Cerberus in Greece. They may be four-eyed in the sense of sharp-sighted or in reference to the round spots situated above their eyes.

13. The dogs are asked to give back to the mourners the life that was endangered while they were in the shadow of death.

14. That is, back into the world of the living.

15. Here Yama is asked to give life back to the mourners who are not yet ready to die, to keep them among the living who worship the gods, and not to lead them to the dead fathers.

16. The fire that burns during the three days of the Soma ceremony is directly connected with and follows immediately upon the cremation fire.

17. The dead man wanders for three days after death before arriving in heaven.

18. Either the three earths and three heavens (cf. 1.164.6, and 1.164.9) or two of each of the three worlds (earth, air, and sky; cf. 1.154.4). The one great space is the top of the sky, where Yama lives.inal association with the fathers (in contrast with the gods, the masters of the second fire). This is a transformation, rather than a confusion, for in verse 9 the one fire becomes the other; as both are forms of Agni, he is merely asked to stop burning the corpse and to start carrying the oblation (a role prefigured by the reference to the ‘gentle forms’ in verse 4). In verse 11, both forms of Agni unite, and in verse 5 the corpse itself becomes the oblation.

The ambiguous nature of Agni in this hymn finds a parallel in the ambiguities surrounding the body of the dead man. Verse 3 states that the body will disperse into sky, earth, and water, while the eye, breath, and limbs go to their cosmic equivalences: sun, wind, and plants. The waters are often identified with the air, the middle realm of space between sky and other ; this would mean that the body disintegrates into the three worlds. But it is not clear whether the body is dispersed into all three places or whether one may choose one or the other; parts of the body (eye, breath, limbs) are specifically distributed, while the dead man himself is said to go into the three worlds.

This might imply that the soul of the dead man goes to these worlds, while his physical parts are distributed elsewhere. But the verse says that the limbs go to the plants, the place to which the soul is consigned in the Upanisads, where the doctrine of transmigration is first expounded. Moreover, the breath (often identified with the soul in

the Upanisads, and here called the Atman, the word that came to designate the transmigrating soul) is here said to disperse separately into the wind. Indeed, it seems to be the body, not the soul, of the dead man that Agni is asked to lead to heaven, to Yama, to the fathers, and to the gods, the body that is the focus of the entire hymn. It would thus appear that here, as in several of the more speculative creation hymns, the poet has tried out various, perhaps conflicting, views of the afterlife. These views overlap in the liminal figures of the hymn, for Yama and the fathers are both mortals and immortals, both pure and impure, the ones who receive the corpse but also the ones who receive the oblation and the Soma; moreover, the dead man himself begins as an impure corpse but becomes, by the end of the hymn, himself one of the fathers to whom the oblation is sent.

These problems are compounded by verse 5, which states that the dead man will get a new body (cf. 10.14.8) in order to reach his descendants. This latter word, literally ‘remaining’ (sesa), has provoked several interpretations that attempt to circumvent the paradox. Sayana suggests that it refers to the body that remains after cremation (i.e. the bones); or it may refer to the survivors of the dead man, i.e. the mourners, or to those who have been buried before, i.e. the ancestors whom the dead man will join. But it more likely means the posterity of the dead man, i.e. the people that he has begotten or will beget with his new life and his new body. Is this body to exist in heaven or on earth? A few verses of the Rig Veda (and more detailed passages in the Brahmanas) give ample evidence for the concept of the new body in heaven, depicting the afterlife as an improved replica of life on earth, a place where one raises children and watches them grow up. But the idea of a new body on earth is supported by the Brahmana funeral ceremonies, the Sraddha offerings in which a man’s descendants create for him, ritually, a new body in which he is reborn on earth. If this is the meaning of the verse, it is an early prefiguration of the doctrine of reincarnation.

Finally, if the dead man is to have a new body anyway, what is the motivation for the desire to keep the old body from being burnt too much (a concept that conflicts paradoxically with the idea of cremating the body in the first place) and to keep it from being destroyed by unclean animals (in verse 6, which may in fact refer to damage done to the live body in the past as well as to the corpse; cf. 10.14.8, where apparently natural ‘imperfections’ of the body are to be removed)? It would appear that Agni cooks the corpse, a function regarded as the opposite of eating it (as he usually does); cooking raises it to a higher state ( fit for heaven), while eating reduces it to a lower state ( fit for animals). The wild beasts who would eat the corpse are kept away, as is the omnivorous Agni; instead, the corpse is to be cooked to prepare it for the gods, like the prepared Soma. And Soma, the healer, is asked to assist Agni in cleansing and healing the body (v. 6).

1 Do not burn him entirely, Agni, or engulf him in your ames. Do not consume his skin or his flesh. When you have cooked him perfectly, O knower of creatures, only then send him forth to the fathers.

2 When you cook him perfectly, O knower of creatures, then give him over to the fathers. When he goes on the path that leads away the breath of life, then he will be led by the will of the gods.

3 [To the dead man:] May your eye go to the sun, your life’s breath to the wind. Go to the sky or to earth, as is your nature;¹ or go to the waters, if that is your fate. Take root in the plants with your limbs.

4 [To Agni:] The goat is your share; burn him with your heat.² Let your brilliant light and flame burn him. With your gentle forms, O knower of creatures, carry this man to the world of those who have done good deeds.³

5 Set him free again to go to the fathers, Agni, when he has been offered as an oblation in you and wanders with the sacrificial drink.⁴ Let him reach his own descendants, dressing himself in a life-span. O knower of creatures, let him join with a body.

6 [To the dead man :] Whatever the black bird has pecked out of you, or the ant, the snake, or even a beast of prey, may Agni who eats all things make it whole, and Soma who has entered the Brahmins.⁵

7 Gird yourself with the limbs of the cow as an armour against Agni,⁶ and cover yourself with fat and suet, so that he will not embrace you with his impetuous heat in his passionate desire to burn you up.

8 [To Agni:] O Agni, do not overturn this cup⁷ that is dear to the gods and to those who love Soma, fit for the gods to drink from, a cup in which the immortal gods carouse.

9 I send the flesh-eating fire far away. Let him go to those whose king is Yama,⁸ carrying away all impurities. But let that other, the knower of creatures, come here and carry the oblation to the gods, since he knows the way in advance.

10 The flesh-eating fire has entered your house, though he sees there the other, the knower of creatures ; I take that god away to the sacrifice of the fathers.⁹ Let him carry the heated drink¹⁰ to the farthest dwelling-place.

11 Agni who carries away the corpse, who gives sacrifice to the fathers who are strengthened by truth – let him proclaim the oblation to the gods and to the fathers.

12 [To the new fire :] Joyously would we put you in place, joyously would we kindle you. Joyously carry the joyous fathers here to eat the oblation.

13 Now, Agni, quench and revive the very one you have burnt up. Let Kiyamba,¹¹ Pakadurva, and Vyalkasa plants grow in this place.

14 O cool one,¹¹ bringer of coolness ; O fresh one, bringer of freshness; unite with the female frog. Delight and inspire this Agni.

NOTES

1. Literally, your dharma. Sayana links this with karma, interpreting it to mean that the dead man will be reborn according to his good works, to enjoy their fruits in heaven; it may have a more general meaning, according to the way the worlds are arranged in general. But the simplest idea would be ‘according to your natural affinities’.

2. This refers to the practice of placing the limbs of a scapegoat over the dead man, so that Agni would consume them and not the corpse with his violent flames.

3. Cf. 10.14.8 and 10.154 for joining with good deeds and the doers of good deeds in heaven.

4. The Svadhâ offered to the gods at the funeral. Cf. 10.14.3.

5. Soma appears here in his capacity of god or plant (cf. The cooling plants in the final verses), or simply as the Soma juice inside the priests.

6. This refers to the limbs and caul (inner membrane of the embryo) or skin of a dead cow which would be used in addition to or in place of the scapegoat, while the corpse would be anointed with fat and suet.

7. A wooden cup that the dead man had used in life to make Soma offerings to the gods and to ‘those who love Soma’ (i.e. the fathers) was placed at the corpse’s head, filled with melted butter.

8. The fathers.

9. This could be a sacrifice by the fathers to the gods, or, more likely, a sacrifice to the fathers.

10. The hot oblation for the fathers, who either come to the sacrifice (brought by the non-flesh-eating Agni) or have Agni bring them the drink.

11. The plants in verses 13 and 14, some called by obscure names, others by descriptive epithets (‘cool one’), are water plants. These verses accompany the ritual of dousing the fire with water so thoroughly that it produces a marsh where water-plants and frogs may thrive. In later rituals, these items were actually used; here they are merely metaphorically invoked. The female frog, in particular, is a symbol of rain and fertility (cf. 7.103). Thus new life sprouts at the end of the funeral.

10.18   Burial Hymn

This evocative hymn contains several references to symbolic gestures that may well have been accompanied by rituals similar to those known to us from later Vedic literature. But the human concerns of the hymn are vividly accessible to us, whatever the ritual may have been.

1 Go away, death, by another path that is your own, different from the road of the gods. I say to you who have eyes, who have ears : do not injure our children or our men.

2 When you¹ have gone, wiping away the footprint of death,² stretching farther your own lengthening span of life, become pure and clean and worthy of sacrifice, swollen with off spring and wealth.

3 These who are alive have now parted from those who are dead. Our invitation to the gods has become auspicious today. We have gone forward to dance and laugh, stretching farther our own lengthening span of life.

4 I set up this wall³ for the living, so that no one else among them will reach this point. Let them live a hundred full autumns and bury death in this hill.⁴

5 As days follow days in regular succession, as seasons come after seasons in proper order, in the same way order their life-spans, O Arranger, so that the young do not abandon the old.

6 Climb on to old age, choosing a long life-span, and follow in regular succession, as many as you are. May Tvastr who presides over good births be persuaded to give you a long life-span to live.

7 These women who are not widows, who have good husbands – let them take their places, using butter to anoint their eyes.⁵ Without tears, without sickness, well dressed let them first⁶ climb into the marriage bed.

8 Rise up, woman,⁷ into the world of the living. Come here; you are lying beside a man whose life’s breath has gone. You were the wife of this man who took your hand and desired to have you.

9 I take the bow from the hand of the dead man,⁸ to be our supremacy and glory and power, and I say, ‘You are there; we are here. Let us as great heroes conquer all envious attacks.’

10 Creep away to this broad, vast earth, the mother that is kind and gentle. She is a young girl, soft as wool to anyone who makes offerings;⁹ let her guard you from the lap of Destruction.¹⁰

11 Open up, earth; do not crush him. Be easy for him to enter and to burrow in. Earth, wrap him up as a mother wraps a son in the edge of her skirt.

12 Let the earth as she opens up stay firm, for a thousand pillars must be set up.¹¹ Let them be houses dripping with butter for him, and let them be a refuge for him here for all his days.

13 I shore up the earth all around you;¹² let me not injure you as I lay down this clod of earth. Let the fathers hold up this pillar for you ; let Yama build a house for you here.

14 On a day that will come, they will lay me in the earth, like the feather of an arrow.¹³ I hold back speech that goes against the grain,¹⁴ as one would restrain a horse with a bridle.

NOTES

1. The hymn, that began by addressing death directly, now addresses the company of the mourners.

2. There may have been a ritual to erase the footprints of the mourners, or it may be a simple and straightforward metaphor for the end of mourning.

3. Perhaps a stone to mark the boundary of the world of death.

4. The mound over the grave.

5. Ritually purified butter would be used instead of mascara or eye-shadow to protect the women among the mourners.

6. That is, long before they climb into old age or the grave.

7. The wife of the dead man, who lay down beside him (perhaps miming copulation, as the queen later did with the dead stallion), until called back with this verse.

8. Probably only done when the dead man was a warrior.

9. That is, to any generous sacrificer, not merely to someone who makes offerings to the earth.

10. Destruction (Nirrti) is the female personification of disorder and disintegration, in contrast with the orderly and peaceful aspects of death.

11. The metaphorical house built by Yama for the dead man, perhaps symbolized by the urn containing his bones (or his cremated ashes) placed in the earth.

12. The dead man is addressed again.

13. An elliptic metaphor, perhaps referring to the way the feather is stuck into the cleft made for it in the arrow, or as a feather floats gently down to earth when it is freed from the arrow.

14. Perhaps a reference to the poet’s satisfaction in having made a good hymn, or his pleasure in returning now to more auspicious subjects, or a statement that the rest is silence. Most likely, a command to remain silent lest one say something ill-omened.

10.154   Funeral Hymn

The hymn begins with a distinction between levels of spiritual attainment and then asks that the dead man be sent to live among those who are distinguished in one way or another.

1 For some, the Soma is purified; others sit down for butter.¹ Those for whom honey flows² – let the dead man go away straight to them.

2 Those who became invincible through sacred heat,³ who went to the sun through sacred heat, who made sacred heat their glory – let him go away straight to them.

3 Those who ight in battles as heroes, who sacrifice their bodies, or those who give thousands to the priests – let him go away straight to them.

4 Those who first nursed Order, who had Order and made Order grow great, the fathers full of sacred heat, O Yama – let him go away straight to them.

5 Those inspired poets who know a thousand ways, who protect the sun, the seers full of sacred heat, O Yama -let him go away to those who are reborn through sacred heat.

NOTES

1. A distinction between the foods of the gods and the dead fathers. Cf. 10.14.3. and 10.135.1. Though both groups eat both foods, Soma is ambrosia for the gods, while butter is human food for the semi-divine fathers.

2. As honey (Soma) is better than butter, the dead man hopes to go to the gods.

3. Tapas, the heat generated by religious activity. Cf. 10.190.

10.135   The Boy and the Chariot

Though this hymn is traditionally dedicated to Yama, Yama appears only in the first and last verses (which are closely related), framing an allegory of the secret of death. The plot, though obscure, seems to be something like this: The father of a young boy has died, and the boy mentally follows the journey of his father to the realm of Yama, grieving and trying to get him to return; the hymn does not necessarily imply that the boy himself dies or even wants to die. The voice of the father answers the boy, saying that the chariot that the boy has built in his imagination to follow his father is already, unknown to the boy, bringing him after the father. This chariot is the funeral sacrifice or the oblation or the funeral fire that ‘carries’ the corpse to Yama and the fathers.¹ It is, at the same time, a manifestation of the boy’s own wish to see his father.² The final verse gives a vision of paradise, perhaps to reassure the boy.³

1 [The son:] ‘Beneath the tree with beautiful leaves where Yama drinks with the gods, there our father, the head of the family, turns with longing to the ancient ones.⁴

2 ‘ Reluctantly I looked upon him as he turned with longing to the ancient ones, as he moved on that evil way.⁵ I longed to have him back again.’

3 [Voice of the father :] ‘In your mind, my son, you made a new chariot without wheels, which had only one shaft but can travel in all directions. And unseeing,⁶ you climbed into it.

4 ‘My son, when you made the chariot roll forth from the priests,⁷ there rolled after it a chant that was placed from there upon a ship.’

5 Who gave birth to the boy? Who made the chariot roll out? Who could tell us today how the gift for the journey⁸ was made?

6 How was the gift for the journey made? The beginning arose from it: first they made the bottom, and then they made the way out.⁹

7 This is the dwelling-place of Yama, that is called the home of the gods. This is his reed- pipe that is blown, and he is the one adorned with songs.

NOTES

1. Cf. 1.164 for the mystic symbolism of the chariot that is the sacrifice, with no wheels and one shaft (10.135.3); and cf. 10.16 for the funeral re.

2. In later Sanskrit, the ‘chariot of the mind’ (manoratha) is a word for ‘wish’. Cf. 10.85.12 for a chariot made of thought.

3. This hymn may be the kernel of the famous myth of Naciketas, in which a boy travels to the realm of death and converses with Death and with his father. But the present hymn cannot be interpreted as if it were already an expression of that complex myth.

4. The dead ancestors in the realm of Yama. Cf. 10.14.

5. The path of death; probably not Hell, but cf. 10.71.9 and 10.85.30.

6. Literally, not seeing the chariot that you are mounting; symbolically, not understanding the power of the sacrifice.

7. The priests compose the funerary hymns which accompany the corpse and which are thus ‘carried’ by the chariot and by a ship (both metaphors for the sacrifice and the oblation) that the priests send away from them.

8. Probably equipment with which the deceased was supplied for the journey to Yama’s abode (cf. 10.16.8), here identified with the chant placed on the sacrificial chariot. The word here translated ‘gift for the journey’ (anudeyï) occurs only once more in the Rig Veda, to describe the woman who accompanies the bride on her journey to the groom’s house (10.85.6).

9. This verse is simultaneously a literal description of the chariot and a figurative reference to the chant, with its opening and closing phrases.

10.58   A Spell to Turn Back the Departing Spirit

This imprecation to the mafias – heart, mind, and life-spirit -may have been spoken over a dead man or to a man on the brink of death, to keep the spirit within the body. The central verses refer alternately to earth (3, 5, 7, 9) and sky (4, 6, 8).

1 If your spirit has gone to Yama the son of Vivasvan far away, we turn it back to you here to dwell and to live.

2 If your spirit has gone to the sky or to the earth far away, we turn it back to you here to dwell and to live.

3 If your spirit has gone to the four-cornered earth far away, we turn it back to you here to dwell and to live.

4 If your spirit has gone to the four quarters of the sky far away, we turn it back to you here to dwell and to live.

5 If your spirit has gone to the billowy ocean far away, we turn it back to you here to dwell and to live.

6 If your spirit has gone to the flowing streams of light far away, we turn it back to you here to dwell and to live.

7 If your spirit has gone to the waters, or to the plants, far away, we turn it back to you here to dwell and to live.

8 If your spirit has gone to the sun, or to the dawns far away, we turn it back to you here to dwell and to live.

9 If your spirit has gone to the high mountains far away, we turn it back to you here to dwell and to live.

10 If your spirit has gone to this whole moving universe far away, we turn it back to you to dwell and to live.

11 If your spirit has gone to distances beyond the beyond, far away, we turn it back to you to dwell and to live.

12 If your spirit has gone to what has been and what is to be, far away, we turn it back to you to dwell and to live.