an the funeral, as distinct from the
ancestral ceremonies. In one respect these funeral ceremonies may
represent an earlier phase of worship than the daily and monthly
ancestral sacrifices. They lead up to them, and, as it were, prepare
the departed for their future dignity as Pit_ri_s or Ancestors. On the
other hand, the conception of Ancestors in general must have existed
before any departed person could have been raised to that rank, and I
therefore preferred to describe the ancestral sacrifices first.

Nor need I enter here very fully into the character of the special
funeral ceremonies of India. I described them in a special paper, "On
Sepulture and Sacrificial Customs in the Veda," nearly thirty years
ago.[303] Their spirit is the same as that of the funeral ceremonies
of Greeks, Romans, Slavonic, and Teutonic nations, and the
coincidences between them all are often most surprising.

In Vedic times the people in India both burned and buried their dead,
and they did this with a certain solemnity, and, after a time,
according to fixed rules. Their ideas about the status of the
departed, after their body had been burned and their ashes buried,
varied considerably, but in the main they seem to have believed in a
life to come, not very different from our life on earth, and in the
power of the departed to confer blessings on their descendants. It
soon therefore became the interest of the survivors to secure the
favor of their departed friends by observances and offerings which, at
first, were the spontaneous manifestation of human feelings, but which
soon became traditional, technical, in fact, ritual.

On the day on which the corpse had been burned, the relatives
(samanodakas) bathed and poured out a handful of water to the
deceased, pronouncing his name and that of his family.[304] At sunset
they returned home, and, as was but natural, they were told to cook
nothing during the first night, and to observe certain rules during
the next day up to ten days, according to the character of the
deceased. These were days of mourning, or, as they were afterward
called, days of impurity, when the mourners withdrew from contact with
the world, and shrank by a natural impulse from the ordinary
occupations and pleasures of life.[305]

Then followed the collecting of the ashes on the 11th, 13th, or 15th
day of the dark half of the moon. On returning from thence they
bathed, and then offered what was called a _S_raddha to the dep