THE EARLY AGE OF GREECE VOL.I by W.Ridgeway 1901

'
and
the
INHUMATION, CREMATION, AND THE SOUL. 537
objects could pass to invisible realms he should be regarded
as the intermediary between mankind and the realms of Yama.
Agui thus becomes a Psychopompos, the conductor to Yama of
the soul which he has rescued from foul and malignant demons.
But the purificatory power of fire was one of the earliest
facts noticed by mankind, and when we find that Agni is called
the Purifier, it
seems likely that one of the reasons which led
to cremation was a desire to banish in the most etfectual of all
ways the defilement arising from a corpse. Thus the Florida
Indians, though they did not burn the dead man, yet consumed
by fire his hut and all his personal belongings, a practice which
looks like the first step towards the cremation or partial
cremation of the body as practised by some of the Indians
of Georgia and north-west America.
" 80 amongst the Arunta tribe of Central Australia, as soon
as burial has taken place, the man's or woman's camp
in which
death occurred is at once burned down, and all the contents
are then destroyed in the case of a wcnnan nothing whatever
"
being pres;erved and the whole of the local
encampment is
shifted to a new place'.
We have just seen a similar dread of the {)ollution arising
from a corpse in the case of the Banjaras of India, who move
their huts aftc'r a death, and make a new entrance, as the
ordinary door has been polluted by the passage of the spirit of
the dead.
The Punyans, an aboriginal ttibe of Borneo, when a death
occurs, at once (piit the camp, leaving the coi'))st'
where it lies
unl)uri('(l (unless it be that of a chief, whieh is thrust into a
hollow tree)-.
At the burning of a coi'psc the X'edic })(M)[)K' said: " (lo far
hence, () Death, oil
thy way wjiicli lietli I'ar from the ])ath
triiildcii
by the gods; 1 l)i(| tliee, who hast t'Ves and hearest,
harm not our chihh'en nor our men-'. '
-
liaiain,
S]>riiccr and (iilhui. 'ilif Xatirr 'l'iilii.<
a/ Criitnil Anstnil in . y. I'.IS.
I (iwr this iMtoniiatinii U\ my IVifiul Cluirlfs Ihisi', I).Sc.. iiiaKistT ate of
Sarawak.
Hill- I'l'ilii ,
X.
is, 1: I'aiaiil iiirilyo atiu piuclii j)antliain y/is tr svi'i itai'o
(Icvayaiirit (ak>lius|iiiiali' >riiival('' tc Inaviiiii iiia iiali jiiajfun niislio iiuUi'i
viraii.
538 INHUMATION, CREMATION, AND THE SOUL.
These lines evince a strong desire to free the living from all
danger likely to arise from the contagion and contamination of
a corpse.
Greeks, Romans, Semites, all dreaded the pollution from
a dead body. Thus among the Romans it was the custom
when the relatives returned from the grave after the interment
of the body, for a priest
to sprinkle them with lustral water
(a practice which still survives in the Roman Church in the
use of holy water at funerals).
Similarly the Hindus according to the Atharva-Veda eniploy
water for lustral purposes.
But though most peoples hold the strong necessity for
purification of all persons and things which have been in
contact with a corpse, very few of them find it necessary to
employ fire for the purpose. We must not then conclude too
hastily that it was merely through a desire to purify themselves
that men began to burn their dead, although such a
feeling was one of the causes which led to the practice.
Thus
the Hebrews, who were normally iuhuinationists, resorted to
cremation in the case of those who died of a plague. Iiuleed
Eustathius tells us that some held that cremation had originated
in the belief that " a corpse was impure, and the consum])ti()n
by fire of that which was decomposed was held to be a S(jrt of
purification, because fii'e was purificatory, wherefore purifications
wei-e carried out by fire." Doubtless the desire of safeguarding
the deacl from the attacks of demons (so nnich dreaded
by the modern Hindus) contributed to the practici'.
As theological doctrines finally put an end to cremation,
so it is all the more likely that it in some degree owed its
beginning
to similar causes.
It' among modo-u barbarians wlio bui'u their dead, we can
find that they ascrilx' this course not to any desire to purity
themselves, but rather from cei'tain ideas concerning the soul of
rhe deitavted,
it will strongly confii-m tlie I'esult at which we
have ai'i'i\-e(l. Such an t'xaniple
is at hand.
"The Curunibalen, a sla\-e caste, who worshij) the hill god
(.Malai-deva and the ) s))irirs
of deceased ancestors, burn their
deail, it (jood men
; l)nr\' them, if bad : lattei' bec(jme