The Religions of India Part 16

In the Avesta Yima is the son of the 'wide-gleaming' Vivanghvant, the sun, and here it is the sun that first prepares the _soma (haoma)_ for man. And so, too, in the Rig Veda it is Yama the son of Vivasvant (X.

58. 1; 60. 10) who first "extends the web" of (_soma_) sacrifice (VII.

33. 9, 12). The Vedic poet, not influenced by later methods of interpretation, saw in Yama neither sun nor moon, nor any other natural phenomenon, for thus he sings, differentiating Yama from them all: "I praise with a song Agni, P[=u]shan, Sun and Moon, Yama in heaven, Trita, Wind, Dawn, the Ray of Light, the Twin Hors.e.m.e.n" (X.

64. 3); and again: "Deserving of laudation are Heaven and Earth, the four-limbed Agni, Yama, Aditi," etc. (X. 92. 11).

Yama is regarded as a G.o.d, although in the Rig Veda he is called only 'king' (X. 14. 1, 11); but later he is expressly a G.o.d, and this is implied, as Ehni shows, even in the Rig Veda: 'a G.o.d found Agni' and 'Yama found Agni' (X. 51. 1 ff.). His primitive nature was that of the 'first mortal that died,' in the words of the Atharva Veda. It is true, indeed, that at a later period even G.o.ds are spoken of as originally 'mortal,'[1] but this is a conception alien from the early notions of the Veda, where 'mortal' signifies no more than 'man.' Yama was the first mortal, and he lives in the sky, in the home that "holds heroes," _i.e._, his abode is where dead heroes congregate (I. 35. 6; X. 64. 3)[2]. The fathers that died of old are cared for by him as he sits drinking with the G.o.ds beneath a fair tree (X. 135. 1-7). The fire that devours the corpse is invoked to depart thither (X. 16. 9).

This place is not very definitely located, but since, according to one prevalent view, the saints guard the sun, and since Yama's abode in the sky is comparable with the sun in one or two pa.s.sages, it is probable that the general idea was that the departed entered the sun and there Yama received him (I. 105. 9, 'my home is there where are the sun's rays'; X. 154. 4-5, 'the dead shall go, O Yama, to the fathers, the seers that guard the sun'). 'Yama's abode' is the same with 'sky' (X. 123. 6); and when it is said, 'may the fathers hold up the pillar (in the grave), and may Yama build a seat for thee there'

(X. 18. 13), this refers, not to the grave, but to heaven. And it is said that 'Yama's seat is what is called the G.o.ds' home' (X. 135.

7)[3]. But Yama does not remain in the sky. He comes, as do other Powers, to the sacrifice, and is invited to seat himself 'with Angirasas and the fathers' at the feast, where he rejoices with them (X. 14. 3-4; 15. 8). And either because Agni devours corpses for Yama, or because of Agni's part in the sacrifice which Yama so joyfully attends, therefore Agni is especially mentioned as Yama's friend (X.

21. 5), or even his priest (_ib_. 52. 3). Yama stands in his relation to the dead so near to death that 'to go on Yama's path' is to go on the path of death; and battle is called 'Yama's strife.' It is even possible that in one pa.s.sage Yama is directly identified with death (X. 165. 4, 'to Yama be reverence, to death'; I. 38. 5; _ib_. 116.

2)[4]. There is always a close connection between Varuna and Yama, and perhaps it is owing to this that parallel to 'Varuna's fetters' is found also 'Yama's fetter,' i.e., death (x. 97. 16).

As Yama was the first to die, so was he the first to teach man the road to immortality, which lies through sacrifice, whereby man attains to heaven and to immortality. Hence the poet says, 'we revere the immortality born of Yama' (i. 83. 5). This, too, is the meaning of the mystic verse which speaks of the sun as the heavenly courser 'given by Yama,' for, in giving the way to immortality, Yama gives also the sun-abode to them that become immortal. In the same hymn the sun is identified with Yama as he is with Trita (i. 163. 3). This particular identification is due, however, rather to the developed pantheistic idea which obtains in the later hymns. A parallel is found in the next hymn: "They speak of Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Agni ... that which is one, the priests speak of in many ways, and call him Agni, Yama, Fire" (or Wind, i. 164. 46).

Despite the fact that one Vedic poet speaks of Yama's name as 'easy to understand' (x. 12. 6), no little ingenuity has been spent on it, as well as on the primitive conception underlying his personality.

Etymologically, his name means Twin, and this is probably the real meaning, for his twin sister Yami is also a Vedic personage. The later age, regarding Yama as a restrainer and punisher of the wicked, derived the name from _yam_ the restrainer or punisher, but such an idea is quite out of place in the province of Vedic thought. The Iranian Yima also has a sister of like name, although she does not appear till late in the literature.

That Yama's father is the sun, Vivasvant (Savitar, 'the artificer,'

Tvashtar, x. 10. 4-5),[5] is clearly enough stated in the Rik; and that he was the first mortal, in the Atharvan. Men come from Yama, and Yama comes from the sun as 'creator,' just as men elsewhere come from Adam and Adam comes from the Creator. But instead of an Hebraic Adam and Eve there are in India a Yama and Yam[=i], brother and sister (wife), who, in the one hymn in which the latter is introduced _(loc. cit.),_ indulge in a moral conversation on the propriety of wedlock between brother and sister. This hymn is evidently a protest against a union that was un.o.bjectionable to an older generation. In the Yajur Veda Yami is wife and sister both. But sometimes, in the varying fancies of the Vedic poets, the artificer Tvashtar is differentiated from Vivasvant, the sun; as he is in another pa.s.sage, where Tvashtar gives to Vivasvant his daughter, and she is the mother of Yama[6].

That men are the children of Yama is seen in X. 13. 4, where it is said, 'Yama averted death for the G.o.ds; he did not avert death for (his) posterity.' In the Brahmanic tradition men derive from the sun (T[=a]itt. S. VI. 5. 6. 2[7]) So, in the Iranian belief, Yima is looked upon, according to some scholars, as the first man. The funeral hymn to Yama is as follows:

Him who once went over the great mountains[8] and spied out a path for many, the son of Vivasvant, who collects men, King Yama, revere ye with oblations. Yama the first found us a way ... There where our old fathers are departed.... Yama is magnified with the Angirasas.... Sit here, O Yama, with the Angirasas and with the fathers.... Rejoice, O king, in this oblation. Come, O Yama, with the venerable Angirasas. I call thy father, Vivasvant, sit down at this sacrifice.

And then, turning to the departed soul:

Go forth, go forth on the old paths where are gone our old fathers; thou shalt see both joyous kings, Yama and G.o.d Varuna. Unite with the fathers, with Yama, with the satisfaction of desires, in highest heaven.... Yama will give a resting place to this spirit. Run past, on a good path, the two dogs of Saram[=a], the four-eyed, spotted ones; go unto the fathers who rejoice with Yama.

Several things are here noteworthy. In the first place, the Atharva Veda reads, "who first of mortals died[9]," and this is the meaning of the Rig Veda version, although, as was said above, the mere fact that Varuna is called a G.o.d and Yama a king proves nothing[10]. But it is clearly implied here that he who crossed the mountains and 'collected men,' as does Yima in the Iranian legend, is an ancient king, as it is also implied that he led the way to heaven. The dogs of Yama are described in such a way as to remind one of the dogs that guard the path the dead have to pa.s.s in the Iranian legend, and of Kerberus, with whose very name the adjective 'spotted' has been compared[11].

The dogs are elsewhere described as white and brown and as barking (VII. 55. 2), and in further verses of the hymn just quoted (X. 14) they are called "thy guardian dogs, O Yama, the four-eyed ones who guard the path, who look on men ... broad-nosed, dark messengers of Yama, who run among the people."

These dogs are due to the same fantasy that creates a Kerberus, the Iranian dogs[12], or other guardians of the road that leads to heaven.

The description is too minute to make it probable that the Vedic poet understood them to be 'sun and moon,' as the later Brahmanical ingenuity explains them, and as they have been explained by modern scholarship. It is not possible that the poet, had he had in mind any connection between the dogs and the sun and moon (or 'night and day'), would have described them as 'barking' or as 'broad-nosed and dark'; and all interpretation of Yama's dogs must rest on the interpretation of Yama himself[13].

Yama is not mentioned elsewhere[14] in the Rig Veda, except in the statement that 'metres rest on Yama,' and in the closing verses of the burial hymn: "For Yama press the _soma_, for Yama pour oblation; the sacrifice goes to Yama; he shall extend for us a long life among the G.o.ds," where the pun on Yama (_yamad a_), in the sense of 'stretch out,' shows that as yet no thought of 'restrainer' was in the poet's mind, although the sense of 'twin' is lost from the name.

In recent years Hillebrandt argues that because the Manes are connected with Soma (as the moon), and because Yama was the first to die, therefore Yama was the moon. Ehni, on the other hand, together with Bergaigne and some other scholars, takes Yama to be the sun.

Muller calls him the 'setting-sun[15].' The argument from the Manes applies better to the sun than to the moon, but it is not conclusive.

The Hindus in the Vedic age, as later, thought of the Manes living in stars, moon, sun, and air; and, if they were not good Manes but dead sinners, in the outer edge of the universe or under ground. In short, they are located in every conceivable place[17].

The Yama, 'who collects people,' has been rightly compared with the Yima, who 'made a gathering of the people,' but it is doubtful whether one should see in this an Aryan trait; for [Greek: Aidaes Agaesilaos]

is not early and popular, but late (Aeschylean), and the expression may easily have arisen independently in the mind of the Greek poet.

From a comparative point of view, in the reconstruction of Yama there is no conclusive evidence which will permit one to identify his original character either with sun or moon. Much rather he appears to be as he is in the Rig Veda, a primitive king, not historically so, but poetically, the first man, fathered of the sun, to whom he returns, and in whose abode he collects his offspring after their inevitable death on earth. In fact, in Yama there is the ideal side of ancestor-worship. He is a poetic image, the first of all fathers, and hence their type and king. Yama's name is unknown outside of the Indo-Iranian circle, and though Ehni seeks to find traces of him in Greece and elsewhere,[18] this scholar's identifications fail, because he fails to note that similar ideas in myths are no proof of their common origin.

It has been suggested that in the paradise of Yama over the mountains there is a companion-piece to the hyperboreans, whose felicity is described by Pindar. The nations that came from the north still kept in legend a recollection of the land from whence they came. This suggestion cannot, of course, be proved, but it is the most probable explanation yet given of the first paradise to which the dead revert.

In the late Vedic period, when the souls of the dead were not supposed to linger on earth with such pleasure as in the sky, Yama's abode is raised to heaven. Later still, when to the Hindu the south was the land of death, Yama's hall of judgment is again brought down to earth and transferred to the 'southern district.'

The careful investigation of Scherman[19] leads essentially to the same conception of Yama as that we have advocated. Scherman believes that Yama was first a human figure, and was then elevated to, if not identified with, the sun. Scherman's only error is in disputing the generally-received opinion, one that is on the whole correct, that Yama in the early period is a kindly sovereign, and in later times becomes the dread king of horrible h.e.l.ls. Despite some testimony to the contrary, part of which is late interpolation in the epic, this is the ant.i.thesis which exists in the works of the respective periods.

The most important G.o.ds of the era of the Rig Veda we now have reviewed. But before pa.s.sing on to the next period it should be noticed that no small number of beings remains who are of the air, devilish, or of the earth, earthy. Like the demons that injure man by restraining the rain in the clouds, so there are _bh[=u]ts_, ghosts, spooks, and other lower powers, some malevolent, some good-natured, who inhabit earth; whence demonology. There is, furthermore, a certain chrematheism, as we have elsewhere[20] ventured to call it, which pervades the Rig Veda, the worship of more or less personified things, differing from pantheism in this,[21] that whereas pantheism a.s.sumes a like divinity in all things, this kind of theism a.s.sumes that everything (or anything) has a separate divinity, usually that which is useful to the worshipper, as, the plough, the furrow, etc. In later hymns these objects are generally of sacrificial nature, and the stones with which _soma_ is pressed are divine like the plant. Yet often there is no sacrificial observance to cause this veneration.

Hymns are addressed to weapons, to the war-car, as to divine beings.

Sorcery and incantation is not looked upon favorably, but nevertheless it is found.

Another cla.s.s of divinities includes abstractions, generally female, such as Infinity, Piety, Abundance, with the barely-mentioned Gung[=u], R[=a]k[=a], etc. (which may be moon-phases). The most important of these abstractions[22] is 'the lord of strength,' a priestly interpretation of Indra, interpreted as religious strength or prayer, to whom are accredited all of Indra's special acts.

Hillebrandt interprets this G.o.d, Brahmanaspati or Brihaspati, as the moon; Muller, somewhat doubtfully, as fire; while Roth will not allow that Brihaspati has anything to do with natural phenomena, but considers him to have been from the beginning 'lord of prayer.' With this view we partly concur, but we would make the important modification that the G.o.d was lord of prayer only as priestly abstraction Indra in his higher development. It is from this G.o.d is come probably the head of the later trinity, Brahm[=a], through personified _brahma_, power; prayer, with its philosophical development into the Absolute. Noteworthy is the fact that some of the Vedic Aryans, despite his high pretensions, do not quite like Brihaspati, and look on him as a suspicious novelty. If one study Brihaspati in the hymns, it will be difficult not to see in him simply a sacerdotal Indra. He breaks the demon's power; crushes the foes of man; consumes the demons with a sharp bolt; disperses darkness; drives forth the 'cows'; gives offspring and riches; helps in battle; discovers Dawn and Agni; has a band (like Maruts) singing about him; he is red and golden, and is identified with fire. Although 'father of G.o.ds,' he is begotten of Tvashtar, the artificer.[23]

Weber has suggested (V[=a]j.a.peya Sacrifice, p. 15), that Brihaspati takes Indra's place, and this seems to be the true solution, Indra as interpreted mystically by priests. In RV. i. 190, Brihaspati is looked upon by 'sinners' as a new G.o.d of little value. Other minor deities can be mentioned only briefly, chiefly that the extent of the pantheon may be seen. For the history of religion they are of only collective importance. The All-G.o.ds play an important part in the sacrifice, a group of 'all the G.o.ds,' a priestly manufacture to the end that no G.o.d may be omitted in laudations that would embrace all the G.o.ds. The later priests attempt to identify these G.o.ds with the clans, 'the All-G.o.ds are the clans' (_cat. Br._ v. 5. 1.10), on the basis of a theological _pun_, the clans, _vicas_, being equated with the word for all, _vicve_. Some modern scholars follow these later priests, but without reason. Had these been special clan-G.o.ds, they would have had special names, and would not have appeared in a group alone.

The later epic has a good deal to say about some lovely nymphs called the Apsarasas, of whom it mentions six as chief (Urvac[=i], Menak[=a], etc.).[24] They fall somewhat in the epic from their Vedic estate, but they are never more than secondary figures, love-G.o.ddesses, beloved of the Gandharvas who later are the singing guardians of the moon, and, like the lunar stations, twenty-seven in number. The Rik knows at first but one Gandharva (an inferior genius, mentioned in but one family-book), who guards Soma's path, and, when Soma becomes the moon, is identified with him, ix. 86. 36. As in the Avesta, Gandharva is (the moon as) an evil spirit also; but always as a second-rate power, to whom are ascribed magic (and madness, later). He has virtually no cult except in _soma_-hymns, and shows clearly the first Aryan conception of the moon as a demoniac power, potent over women, and a.s.sociated with waters.

Mountains, and especially rivers, are holy, and of course are deified.

Primitive belief generally deifies rivers. But in the great river-hymn in the Rig Veda there is probably as much pure poetry as prayer. The Vedic poet half believed in the rivers' divinity, and sings how they 'rush forth like armies,' but it will not do to inquire too strictly in regard to his belief.

He was a poet, and did not expect to be catechized. Of female divinities there are several of which the nature is doubtful. As Dawn or Storm have been interpreted Saram[=a] and Sarany[=u], both meaning 'runner.' The former is Indra's dog, and her litter is the dogs of Yama. One little poem, rather than hymn, celebrates the 'wood-G.o.ddess'

in pretty verses of playful and descriptive character.

Long before there was any formal recognition of the dogma that all G.o.ds are one, various G.o.ds had been identified by the Vedic poets.

Especially, as most naturally, was this the case when diverse G.o.ds having different names were similar in any way, such as Indra and Agni, whose glory is fire; or Varuna and Mitra, whose seat is the sky.

From this casual union of like pairs comes the peculiar custom of invoking two G.o.ds as one. But even in the case of G.o.ds not so radically connected, if their functions were mutually approximate, each in turn became credited with his neighbor's acts. If the traits were similar which characterized each, if the circles of activity overlapped at all, then those divinities that originally were tangent to each other gradually became concentric, and eventually were united.

And so the lines between the G.o.ds were wiped out, as it were, by their conceptions crowding upon one another. There was another factor, however, in the development of this unconscious, or, at least, unacknowledged, pantheism. Aided by the likeness or ident.i.ty of attributes in Indra, Savitar, Agni, Mitra, and other G.o.ds, many of which were virtually the same under a different designation, the priests, ever p.r.o.ne to extravagance of word, soon began to attribute, regardless of strict propriety, every power to every G.o.d. With the exception of some of the older divinities, whose forms, as they are less complex, retain throughout the simplicity of their primitive character, few G.o.ds escaped this adoration, which tended to make them all universally supreme, each being endowed with all the attributes of G.o.dhead. One might think that no better fate could happen to a G.o.d than thus to be magnified. But when each G.o.d in the pantheon was equally glorified, the effect on the whole was disastrous. In fact, it was the death of the G.o.ds whom it was the intention of the seers to exalt. And the reason is plain. From this universal praise it resulted that the individuality of each G.o.d became less distinct; every G.o.d was become, so to speak, any G.o.d, so far as his peculiar attributes made him a G.o.d at all, so that out of the very praise that was given to him and his confreres alike there arose the idea of the abstract G.o.dhead, the G.o.d who was all the G.o.ds, the one G.o.d. As a pure abstraction one finds thus Aditi, as equivalent to 'all the G.o.ds,'[25] and then the more personal idea of the G.o.d that is father of all, which soon becomes the purely personal All-G.o.d. It is at this stage where begins conscious premeditated pantheism, which in its first beginnings is more like monotheism, although in India there is no monotheism which does not include devout polytheism, as will be seen in the review of the formal philosophical systems of religion.

It is thus that we have attempted elsewhere[26] to explain that phase of Hindu religion which Muller calls henotheism.

Muller, indeed, would make of henotheism a new religion, but this, the worshipping of each divinity in turn as if it were the greatest and even the only G.o.d recognized, is rather the result of the general tendency to exaltation, united with pantheistic beginnings. Granting that pure polytheism is found in a few hymns, one may yet say that this polytheism, with an accompaniment of half-acknowledged chrematheism, pa.s.sed soon into the belief that several divinities were ultimately and essentially but one, which may be described as h.o.m.oiotheism; and that the poets of the Rig Veda were unquestionably esoterically unitarians to a much greater extent and in an earlier period than has generally been acknowledged. Most of the hymns of the Rig Veda were composed under the influence of that unification of deities and tendency to a quasi-monotheism, which eventually results both in philosophical pantheism, and in the recognition at the same time of a personal first cause. To express the difference between h.e.l.lenic polytheism and the polytheism of the Rig Veda the latter should be called, if by any new term, rather by a name like pantheistic polytheism, than by the somewhat misleading word henotheism. What is novel in it is that it represents the fading of pure polytheism and the engrafting, upon a polytheistic stock, of a speculative h.o.m.oiousian tendency soon to bud out as philosophic pantheism.

The admission that other G.o.ds exist does not nullify the att.i.tude of tentative monotheism. "Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the G.o.ds?"

asks Moses, and his father-in-law, when converted to the new belief, says: "Now I know that the Lord is greater than all G.o.ds."[27] But this is not the quasi-monotheism of the Hindu, to whom the other G.o.ds were real and potent factors, individually distinct from the one supreme G.o.d, who represents the All-G.o.d, but is at once abstract and concrete.

Pantheism in the Rig Veda comes out clearly only in one or two pa.s.sages: "The priests represent in many ways the (sun) bird that is one"; and (cited above) "They speak of him as Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Agni, ... that which is but one they call variously." So, too, in the Atharvan it is said that Varuna (here a pantheistic G.o.d) is "in the little drop of water,"[28] as in the Rik the spark of material fire is identified with the sun.

The new belief is voiced chiefly in that portion of the Rig Veda which appears to be latest and most Brahmanic in tone.

Here a supreme G.o.d is described under the name of "Lord of Beings,"

the "All-maker," "The Golden Germ," the "G.o.d over G.o.ds, the spirit of their being" (x. 121). The last, a famous hymn, Muller ent.i.tles "To the Unknown G.o.d." It may have been intended, as has been suggested, for a theological puzzle,[29] but its language evinces that in whatever form it is couched--each verse ends with the refrain, 'To what G.o.d shall we offer sacrifice?' till the last verse answers the question, saying, 'the Lord of beings'--it is meant to raise the question of a supreme deity and leave it unanswered in terms of a nature-religion, though the germ is at bottom fire: "In the beginning arose the Golden Germ; as soon as born he became the Lord of All. He established earth and heaven--to what G.o.d shall we offer sacrifice? He who gives breath, strength, whose command the shining G.o.ds obey; whose shadow is life and death.... When the great waters went everywhere holding the germ and generating light, then arose from them the one spirit (breath) of the G.o.ds.... May he not hurt us, he the begetter of earth, the holy one who begot heaven ... Lord of beings, thou alone embracest all things ..."

In this closing period of the Rig Veda--a period which in many ways, the sudden completeness of caste, the recognition of several Vedas, etc., is much farther removed from the beginning of the work than it is from the period of Brahmanic speculation--philosophy is hard at work upon the problems of the origin of G.o.ds and of being. As in the last hymn, water is the origin of all things; out of this springs fire, and the wind which is the breath of G.o.d. So in the great hymn of creation: "There was then neither not-being nor being; there was no atmosphere, no sky. What hid (it)? Where and in the protection of what? Was it water, deep darkness? There was no death nor immortality.

There was no difference between night and day. That One breathed ...

nothing other than this or above it existed. Darkness was concealed in darkness in the beginning. Undifferentiated water was all this (universe)." Creation is then declared to have arisen by virtue of desire, which, in the beginning was the origin of mind;[30] and "the G.o.ds," it is said further, "were created after this." Whether ent.i.ty springs from non-ent.i.ty or vice versa is discussed in another hymn of the same book.[31] The most celebrated of the pantheistic hymns is that in which the universe is regarded as portions of the deity conceived as the primal Person: "Purusha (the Male Person) is this all, what has been and will be ... all created things are a fourth of him; that which is immortal in the sky is three-fourths of him." The hymn is too well known to be quoted entire. All the castes, all G.o.ds, all animals, and the three (or four) Vedas are parts of him.[32]

Such is the mental height to which the seers have raised themselves before the end of the Rig Veda. The figure of the Father-G.o.d, Praj[=a]pati, 'lord of beings,' begins here; at first an epithet of Savitar, and finally the type of the head of a pantheon, such as one finds him to be in the Br[=a]hmanas. In one hymn only (x. 121) is Praj[=a]pati found as the personal Father-G.o.d and All-G.o.d. At a time when philosophy created the one Universal Male Person, the popular religion, keeping pace, as far as it could, with philosophy, invented the more anthropomorphized, more human, Father-G.o.d--whose name is ultimately interpreted as an interrogation, G.o.d Who? This trait lasts from now on through all speculation. The philosopher conceived of a first source. The vulgar made it a personal G.o.d.

One of the most remarkable hymns of this epoch is that on V[=a]c, Speech, or The Word. Weber has sought in this the prototype of the Logos doctrine (below). The Word, V[=a]c (feminine) is introduced as speaking (x. 125):

I wander with the Rudras, with the Vasus,[33] with the [=A]dityas, and with all the G.o.ds; I support Mitra, Va['r]una, Indra-Agni, and the twin Acvins ... I give wealth to him that gives sacrifice, to him that presses the _soma_.

I am the queen, the best of those worthy of sacrifice ...

The G.o.ds have put me in many places ... I am that through which one eats, breathes, sees, and hears ... Him that I love I make strong, to be a priest, a seer, a wise man. 'Tis I bend Rudra's bow to hit the unbeliever; I prepare war for the people; I am entered into heaven and earth. I beget the father of this (all) on the height; my place is in the waters, the sea; thence I extend myself among all creatures and touch heaven with my crown. Even I blow like the wind, encompa.s.sing all creatures. Above heaven and above earth, so great am I grown in majesty.

This is almost Vedantic pantheism with the Vishnuite doctrine of 'special grace' included.

The moral tone of this period--if period it may be called--may best be examined after one has studied the idea which the Vedic Hindu has formed of the life hereafter. The happiness of heaven will be typical of what he regards as best here. Bliss beyond the grave depends in turn upon the existence of the spirit after death, and, that the reader may understand this, we must say a few words in regard to the Manes, or fathers dead. "Father Manu," as he is called,[34] was the first 'Man.' Subsequently he is the secondary parent as a kind of Noah; but Yama, in later tradition his brother, has taken his place as norm of the departed fathers, Pitaras.