in order that nothing might be awanting necessary for a palace, and these palaces were burned with great pomp, and it is thus that immense riches have been given to the flames from the foolish belief that it would serve the dead in the other world.'[1]
Though the custom is found among the Beduins of arraying the dead with turban, girdle, and sword, yet funeral offerings for the service of the dead are by no means conspicuous among Semitic nations. The mention of the rite by Ezekiel, while showing a full sense of its meaning, characterizes it as not Israelite, but Gentile: 'The mighty fallen of the uncircumcised, which are gone down to Hades with weapons of war, and they have laid their swords under their heads.'[2] Among the Aryan nations, on the contrary, such funeral offerings are known to have prevailed widely and of old, while for picturesqueness of rite and definiteness of purpose they can scarcely be surpassed even among savages. Why the Brahman's sacrificial instruments are to be burnt with him on the funeral pile, appears from this line of the Veda recited at the ceremony: 'Yadâ gachchâtyasunîtimetâmathâ devânâm vasanîrbhavâti,'—'When he cometh unto that life, faithfully will he do the service of the gods.'[3] Lucian is sarcastic, but scarcely unfair, in his comments on the Greek funeral rites, speaking of those who slew horses and slave-girls and cupbearers, and burned or buried clothes and ornaments, as for use and service in the world below; of the meat amd drink offerings on the tombs which serve to feed the bodiless shades in Hades; of the splendid garments and the garlands of the dead, that they might not suffer cold upon the road, nor be seen naked by Kerberos. For Kerberos was intended the honey-cake deposited with the dead; and the obolus
- ↑ Bastian' Psychologie,' p. 89;' Journ. Ind. Archip.' vol. iii. p. 337. For other instances, see Bastian, Mensch,' vol. ii. p. 332, &c.; Alger, 'Future Life,' part ii.
- ↑ Klemm, ' C. G.' vol. iv. p. 159; Ezek. xxxii. 27.
- ↑ Max Müller, 'Todtenbestattung der Brahmanen,' in D. M. Z. vol. ix. pp. vii.-xiv.
