believe in a
happy hereafter for good warriors, only a very few tribes have any
belief in punishment for the bad. At most a Niflheim awaits the
coward. Weber thinks the Aryans already believed in a personal
immortality, and we agree with him. Whitney's belief that hell was not
known before the Upanishad period (in his translations of the _Katha
Upanishad_) is correct only if by hell torture is meant, and if the
Atharvan is later than this Upanishad, which is improbable.

The good dead in the Rig Veda return with Yama to the sacrifice to
enjoy the _soma_ and viands prepared for them by their descendants.
Hence the whole belief in the necessity of a son in order to the
obtaining of a joyful hereafter. What the rite of burial was to the
Greek, a son was to the Hindu, a means of bliss in heaven. Roth
apparently thinks that the Rig Veda's heaven is one that can best be
described in Dr. Watt's hymn:

There is a land of pure delight
Where saints immortal reign,
Eternal day excludes the night,
And pleasures banish pain;

and that especial stress should be laid on the word 'pure.' But there
is very little teaching of personal purity in the Veda, and the poet
who hopes for a heaven where he is to find 'longing women,' 'desire
and its fulfillment' has in mind, in all probability, purely impure
delights. It is not to be assumed that the earlier morality surpassed
that of the later day, when, even in the epic, the hero's really
desired heaven is one of drunkenness and women _ad libitum_. Of the
'good man' in the Rig Veda are demanded piety toward gods and manes
and liberality to priests; truthfulness and courage; and in the end of
the work there is a suggestion of ascetic 'goodness' by means of
_tapas_, austerity.[52] Grassman cites one hymn as dedicated to

'Mercy.' It is really (not a hymn and) not on mercy, but a poem
praising generosity. This generosity, however (and in general this is
true of the whole people), is not general generosity, but liberality
to the priests.[53] The blessings asked for are wealth (cattle,
horses, gold, etc.), virile power, male children ('heroic offspring')
and immortality, with its accompanying joys. Once there is a tirade
against the friend that is false to his friend (truth in act as well
as in word);[54] once only, a poem on concord, which seems to partake
of the nature of an incantation.

Incantations are rare in the Rig Veda, and appear to be looked upon as
objectionable. So in V