DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.636#0288
276 Death, Funeral Rites, and Ancestor-worship.
his departed grandfathers and grandmothers, and whether he
would believe in the sanity of any one who was in the habit of
offering periodical homage to his two great-grandfathers and
great-grandmothers.
This neglect of one's ancestors, which seems to spring not
so much from any want of sympathy with the departed as
from an utter disbelief in any interconnexion between this
world and the world of spirits, is by some regarded as a
defect in our religious character and practice.
In Eastern countries, especially India and China, the oppo-
site extreme generally prevails. We know that in India,
every religious duty is magnified and intensified. There, to
speak of mere reverence for the dead is a very inadequate
expression. The constant periodical performance of com-
memorative obsequies is regarded in the light of a positive
and peremptory obligation. It is the simple discharge of a
solemn debt due to one's forefathers—a debt consisting not
only in reverential homage, but in the performance of acts
necessary to their support, happiness, and progress onward in
the spirit-world. A man's deceased relatives, for at least
three generations, are among his cherished divinities, and must
be honoured by daily offerings and adoration, or a Nemesis of
some kind is certain to overtake his living family.
Nothing, in fact, interested me more in what I saw of the
religious practices of the Hindus, and nothing seemed to me
more worthy of note in comparing Hinduism with other re-
ligions, than the elaborate nature of its funeral rites and the
extraordinary importance attached to these and to the sub-
sequent ceremonies called Sraddha.
And here at the outset it may be well to point out that the
main object of a Hindu funeral is very different from that
of European obsequial rites.
It is nothing less than the investiture of the departed
spirit with an intermediate gross body — a peculiar frame
interposed, as it were parenthetically, between the terres-
his departed grandfathers and grandmothers, and whether he
would believe in the sanity of any one who was in the habit of
offering periodical homage to his two great-grandfathers and
great-grandmothers.
This neglect of one's ancestors, which seems to spring not
so much from any want of sympathy with the departed as
from an utter disbelief in any interconnexion between this
world and the world of spirits, is by some regarded as a
defect in our religious character and practice.
In Eastern countries, especially India and China, the oppo-
site extreme generally prevails. We know that in India,
every religious duty is magnified and intensified. There, to
speak of mere reverence for the dead is a very inadequate
expression. The constant periodical performance of com-
memorative obsequies is regarded in the light of a positive
and peremptory obligation. It is the simple discharge of a
solemn debt due to one's forefathers—a debt consisting not
only in reverential homage, but in the performance of acts
necessary to their support, happiness, and progress onward in
the spirit-world. A man's deceased relatives, for at least
three generations, are among his cherished divinities, and must
be honoured by daily offerings and adoration, or a Nemesis of
some kind is certain to overtake his living family.
Nothing, in fact, interested me more in what I saw of the
religious practices of the Hindus, and nothing seemed to me
more worthy of note in comparing Hinduism with other re-
ligions, than the elaborate nature of its funeral rites and the
extraordinary importance attached to these and to the sub-
sequent ceremonies called Sraddha.
And here at the outset it may be well to point out that the
main object of a Hindu funeral is very different from that
of European obsequial rites.
It is nothing less than the investiture of the departed
spirit with an intermediate gross body — a peculiar frame
interposed, as it were parenthetically, between the terres-