of the dead.

The Persians had their Fravashis, the Greeks their [Greek: eidola], or
rather their [Greek: theoi patrooi] and their [Greek: daimones],

[Greek: esthloi, epichthonioi, phylakes thneton anthropon;
hoi rha phylassousin te dikas kai schetlia erga,
eera hessamenoi pante phoitontes ep' aian,
ploutodotai] (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 Brahmans
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 Pit_ri_s, or fathers, are invoked together with the
Devas, or gods, but they are not confounded with them. The Devas never
become Pit_ri_s, and though such adjectives as d e v a are sometimes
applied to the Pit_ri_s, and they are raised to the rank of the older
classes of Devas (Manu III. 192, 284, Ya_gn_avalkya I. 268), it is
easy to see that the Pit_ri_s 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 Devahuti, 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 almos