Fathers, you who have been consumed by Agni, come
here, sit down on your seats, you kind guides! Eat of the
offerings which we have placed on the turf, and then grant
us wealth and strong offspring!

12. "O Agni, O _G_atavedas,[291] at our request thou hast
carried the offerings, having first rendered them sweet.
Thou gavest them to the Fathers, and they fed on their
share. Eat also, O god, the proffered oblations!

13. "The Fathers who are here, and the Fathers who are not
here, those whom we know, and those whom we know not, thou
_G_atavedas, knowest how many they are, accept the well-made
sacrifice with the sacrificial portions!

14. "To those who, whether burned by fire or not burned by
fire, rejoice in their share in the midst of heaven, grant
thou, O King, that their body may take that life which they
wish for!"[292]

Distinct from the worship offered to these primitive ancestors, is
the reverence which from an early time was felt to be due by children
to their departed father, soon also to their grandfather, and
great-grandfather. The ceremonies in which these more personal
feelings found expression were of a more domestic character, and
allowed therefore of greater local variety.

It would be quite impossible to give here even an abstract only of the
minute regulations which have been preserved to us in the Brahma_n_as,
the _S_rauta, G_ri_hya, and Samaya_k_arika Sutras, the Law-books, and
a mass of later manuals on the performance of endless rites, all
intended to honor the Departed. Such are the minute prescriptions as
to times and seasons, as to altars and offerings, as to the number and
shape of the sacrificial vessels, as to the proper postures of the
sacrificers, and the different arrangements of the vessels, that it is
extremely difficult to catch hold of what we really care for, namely,
the thoughts and intentions of those who first devised all these
intricacies. Much has been written on this class of sacrifices by
European scholars also, beginning with Colebrooke's excellent essays
on "The Religious Ceremonies of the Hindus," first published in the
"Asiatic Researches," vol. v. Calcutta, 1798. But when we ask the
simple question, What was the thought from whence all this outward
ceremonial sprang, and what was the natural craving of the human heart
which it seemed to satisfy, we hardly get an intelligible answer
anywhere. I