GARUDA PURANA

and Other Hindu Ideas on Death, Rebirth and

Immortality

Devdutt Pattanaik has been writing on mythology and its relevance in

modern times for the past twenty-five years. Based in Mumbai, in India, he
was trained in medicine and worked in the pharma industry for fifteen years
before turning his passion into his vocation. He illustrates most of his
books, and is also well known for his lectures and TV shows like Devlok
and Business Sutra. His other books by Westland are Seven Secrets of
Hindu Calendar Art, Seven Secrets of Shiva, Seven Secrets of Vishnu and
Seven Secrets of the Goddess.

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First published by Westland Books, a division of Nasadiya Technologies
Private Limited, in 2022

No. 269/2B, First Floor, ‘Irai Arul’, Vimalraj Street, Nethaji Nagar,
Allappakkam Main Road, Maduravoyal, Chennai 600095

Westland and the Westland logo are the trademarks of

Nasadiya Technologies Private Limited, or its affiliates.

Text and illustrations copyright © Devdutt Pattanaik, 2022

Devdutt Pattanaik asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of

this work.

ISBN: 9789395073448

The views and opinions expressed in this work are the author’s own and the
facts are as reported by him, and the publisher is in no way liable for the
same.

All rights reserved

Author’s photograph by Harpreet Chhachhia

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transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission
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 To my parents,
to my grandparents,
to my great-grandparents,
to all my ancestors before,
and to every other ancestor out there.

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 Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1 Journey of the Dead
Chapter 2 Rituals for the Dead
Chapter 3 Memorials for the Dead
Chapter 4 Women of the Dead
Chapter 5 Caretakers of the Dead
Chapter 6 Fear of the Dead
Chapter 7 History of Death
Chapter 8 Gods of Death
Chapter 9 Outsmarting Death
Chapter 10 Facing Death
Chapter 11 Ending Death
Conclusion
Glossary
Bibliography
Acknowledgements

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 Introduction
In which we learn about the 3,000-year-old
Hindu ritual of feeding the dead

During the Indian monsoons—between the ten-day festival of Ganesha

(Ganesha Utsava), the elephant-headed remover of obstacles, and the nine-
night festival of the Mother Goddess Durga (Nava-ratri)—Hindus observe
Pitr-paksha, or the fortnight (paksha, in Sanskrit) of the ancestors (pitr).
This is a dark fortnight of the lunar month, in the dark half of the year. It is
a time to feed the dead. Facing the south, Hindu men across India are seen
placing mashed rice balls mixed with black sesame seeds, known as pinda,
on blades of grass, near water bodies. They pour water on these pinda in a
peculiar way, known as tarpana, over the thumb of the right hand that is
stretched outward away from the body. Crows are encouraged to eat this
rice. Every shopkeeper knows business will be slow at this time. Indeed,
many Hindu families avoid buying cars or houses or even new clothes. No
contracts are signed. No weddings conducted. This hesitance is interesting
for what it reveals of the ambiguous relationship Hindus have with the
dead. The ancestors are venerated and need to be fed, it’s true.
However, all things associated with death are also deemed inauspicious
and impure.
 Of course, not all Hindus follow these practices and customs. Hinduism
is diverse, dynamic and complex. But the dominant mainstream Hindu
understanding of death comes from the Preta-kalpa of the Garuda Purana,
which was composed a thousand years ago, and is still read during funeral
ceremonies. The ritual of shradh that involves offering pinda to ancestors
can be traced to Grihya-sutra literature, which is over 2,500 years old,
indicating a remarkable continuity of tradition. The word ‘pitr’ used for
ancestors can be traced even to the Rig Veda, Hinduism’s oldest scripture.
While the practice of giving food and gifts to the dead is found in many
cultures, Hindu customs are unique as they are based on the metaphysics of
rebirth, not an eternal afterlife. Hindus believe nothing is permanent, not
even death. The dead eventually return to the land of the living to repay
unpaid debts. Life is needed to free oneself from the burden of debts.
Feeding the dead is itself an obligation, a repayment of debt. Those alive
owe their life and privilege to the dead. The dead depend on the living to
facilitate their return to the land of the living and keep the circle of life
turning.
 This idea of eternal return is embedded in the Hindu mind through ritual
and story. In Vedic times, the ritual arena was set aflame after a yagna—as
is done in the case of a funeral— and the altar was then reconstituted with
fresh bricks. Today, festivals of Ganesha and Durga are celebrated over ten
days and nine nights to remind us of ten lunar months and nine solar
months of pregnancy. After the festival, clay effigies of the deity are cast
into water bodies, like the ashes of the dead. Thus, even the gods are
impermanent. They go away this year but will return next year, mimicking
the reality of re-death (punar-mrityu) and rebirth (punarjanma) mentioned
in the Upanishads.
 In the temple of Jagannath Puri, in Odisha, the deity is embodied in a
brightly painted image of wood, cloth and resin. Every dozen or so years,
the deity grows old and needs to shed his old body. In a secret ritual, the
‘soul’ of the deity is taken out by a blindfolded priest from a secret chamber
of the old body and placed in a secret chamber of the new body. The old
body is then buried, and the new body is installed in the temple in a grand
ceremony, ready to experience the daily, monthly and annual ritual cycles
once again.
Another unique feature of death in the Hindu world view is its
association with impurity. If the clockwise orientation is done for the gods,
the anticlockwise orientation is reserved for ancestors. Those who visit the
crematorium are not allowed to enter the house without bathing. Those
whose hereditary occupation was to tend to funeral pyres were deemed
‘untouchable’, an idea that shaped Hinduism’s now illegal caste hierarchy.
Women fared no better: menstruating women and widows were also seen as
touched by death and so isolated.
That said, the inauspicious funeral ground has also been for centuries the
arena of potent power, magic and the occult, the place where gods take
fearsome forms like Bhairava and Chamunda, and wander in the company
of ghosts and dogs. In many local traditions, the ghosts of ancestors (bhuta)
are summoned by shaman-like priests, who wear grand colourful attires and
go into a trance in public rituals, to advise and bless the living. In Tantric
lore, sorcerers can enslave the ghost (vetala) using the flesh, bones and
skull of the dead as ingredients in secret rituals (shava sadhana). To prevent
this, people were encouraged to let Brahmins perform the Vedic death
rituals, destroying the corpse completely, even smashing its burning skull,
to enable the dead to make the journey to the land of the dead, where they
can be regularly fed until it is time for their rebirth.
 Hindus share their ideas of rebirth with the other faiths of Indian origin,
such as Buddhism and Jainism. Myths in most other parts of the world are
built around a single life followed by an eternal afterlife. Even in India
there are communities such as the Lingayats and the neo-Buddhists who do
not believe in rebirth. When you believe you live only once, this life and
this body become special. Both are commemorated with tombs and
tombstones, a practice shunned by orthodox Hindus who want the dead to
move on, not stay back.
There is much to learn about Hindu culture by approaching it through its
death rituals. Hence this book with its eleven chapters. Why eleven? To
remind us of the odd number of priests invited to the feeding of the dead, in
contrast to the even number of priests invited when feeding the gods.
This is an exploratory enterprise, not an academic one. There are no
‘arguments’ here, or detailed references and citations, but there is an
extensive bibliography at the end of the book for those who want to know
more. I am fully aware that the funeral rituals have multiple sources,
numerous regional and local variations, and many interpretations. This book
is a simplified and accessible version of the vast array of information out
there. The aim is not to find the truth but to appreciate the myriad
expressions of Hinduism and expand our mind with new ideas. As in all my
books, read on, keeping in mind:

Within infinite myths lies an eternal truth

Who sees it all?
Varuna has but a thousand eyes
Indra, a hundred
You and I, only two.

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 Chapter 1

Journey of the Dead

In which we learn how the preta makes its journey to the land of the
dead, and then returns to the land of the living via the womb

When death occurs in a Hindu household, Brahmins narrate the Preta-

kalpa, or Preta-khanda, of the Garuda Purana that describes the journey of
the preta, or spirit, after it leaves the corpse, that justifies the need for
complex Vedic rituals. Before we familiarise ourselves with that journey,
we must appreciate the adventures of Garuda, the celestial eagle, that made
him worthy of bringing this knowledge about the afterlife to the human
world.

Adventures of Garuda

In the Vedic Age that thrived 3,000 years ago in the Gangetic plains, Garuda
was known as Suparna, and he represented the mantras that rose like a
falcon and secured for humans the grace of the gods from the heavens. By
the Puranic Age, some 1,500 years ago, Garuda had become a mighty eagle,
the son of Rishi Kashyapa and his wife, Vinata. The king of all birds and
the vahana (mount) of Vishnu, who protects and balances the world, Garuda
was the dreaded enemy of the Nagas (serpent beings), a motif that had
spread even to Southeast Asia.
In the Puranas, Brahma is called the Creator of the world and the
grandfather (pita-maha) of all organisms (jiva). This is because from his
mind was born Kashyapa, whose many wives gave birth to the diverse
living creatures that populate the earth. Through the sisters Kadru and
Vinata, Kashyapa became the father of snakes and birds. Kadru and Vinata
were rivals. Kadru asked for as many children as could cover the earth and
the sky. Vinata asked for just two but wished that their radiance would
illuminate the earth, the sky, and the atmosphere in between. Kadru laid
millions of eggs and became the mother of Nagas. Vinata laid just two eggs.
 Fearing that Vinata’s children would enslave hers, Kadru instigated her
sister to crack open one of her two eggs and check on the embryo inside. A
malformed child emerged, who slipped away and manifested as the mottled
sky at twilight. This child had no clear genitals, and so dawn is identified
both as the male Aruna and the female Usha. It was clear the eggs contained
radiant sun-like children. The next one would be more powerful.
A nervous Kadru tricked Vinata. She challenged her sister to identify the
colour of the Ucchaishrava’s tail. Ucchaishrava was a celestial horse that
rode past the horizon every day. Vinata said it was white. Kadru insisted it
was black and wagered her freedom to prove it. Vinata accepted the wager
but lost. Kadru used deceit and got her children, the serpents, to cling to
Ucchaishrava’s tail, making it look black from a distance. Vinata became
Kadru’s slave. Her child Garuda was thus born into slavery.
 The price of freedom was Amrita, the nectar of immortality, jealously
guarded by the radiant Devas, who lived in Swarga, the paradise beyond the
celestial regions. Indra, king of the Devas, refused to share his treasure with
anyone, especially his half-brothers, the Asuras. You could get something
from Indra, only by giving him something, like a hymn of praise
accompanying Soma juice offered during the Vedic ritual of yagna. Garuda
used his mighty wings to break into Swarga. There, with his sharp talons
and pointed beak, he overpowered the Devas and secured the pot of Amrita.
He could have sipped the nectar himself, but Garuda had no desire for what
did not belong to him. This earned him the respect of the gods as well as
punya, or positive karma.
Garuda gave the pot of Amrita to the Nagas and secured his mother’s
release. He advised the Nagas to bathe in the Ganga before drinking the
nectar. While they were away, the Devas took the pot back to Swarga.
Garuda did not stop them, for he was no longer a slave of the Nagas. The
Nagas had used trickery to enslave Vinata, and so could not complain
against Garuda’s trickery. The Devas, grateful to get Amrita back, offered
Garuda a boon. He asked that he be allowed to kill the Nagas without
earning demerit. That is only possible, said the Devas, if snakes become his
natural food. Violence to obtain food and satisfy hunger does not generate
negative karma, or paap. This is how snakes became the natural food of
eagles.

In fear, the snakes withdrew to Patala, a realm beneath the earth’s surface
and devoid of sunshine. They illuminated this domain with the Naga-mani,
gems that sprout on the hoods of very old serpents. The older a serpent was
the more hoods it would sprout, and each hood could sprout a jewel with
time. This jewel contained the power of regeneration known as Sanjivani.
This power had seeped into the kusha grass on which the pot of Amrita had
been placed. This is why grass regrows when blades are plucked. This is
why kusha grass is integral to Vedic rituals. Snakes that slithered on this
grass also got the power to regenerate themselves— they could shed their
old skin and replace it with a fresh, youthful one.
 Garuda’s father, Kashyapa, told his son to eat a giant turtle and an
elephant fighting each other. Garuda was also asked to hold the branch of a
tree to prevent the fall of the thumb-sized Valakhilya sages who were
hanging upside down that branch. Garuda wondered about the purpose of
these adventures. Go ask Vishnu, said Kashyapa.

Vishnu was the younger brother of Indra, king of the Devas. Unlike
Indra, he did not crave the pleasures of Swarga. He reclined on the ocean of
milk on the coils of a thousand-hooded Naga called Adi Ananta Sesha. Adi
Ananta Sesha means ‘primal, infinite residue’, referring to the time that
exists before, everywhere and after. This Naga was old, as indicated by his
infinite hoods and the gems sprouting from each one of them. Unlike other
Nagas, Adi Ananta Sesha had condemned his mother’s rivalry with her
sister. This had earned him the love of Vishnu, who had also condemned the
rivalry between the Devas and the Asuras. Devas and Asuras were also
children of Kashyapa. Their mothers, Aditi and Diti, were sisters, like
Kadru and Vinata.
Vishnu offered to answer Garuda’s questions, if the latter agreed to give
up anger against the Nagas and serve as Vishnu’s mount and take him
around the world. Thirsty for knowledge, Garuda agreed to the exchange.
That is why the highest wisdom was revealed to him.
Garuda learnt how a half of time is created when the day eats the night
and the night eats the day, the eagle eats the snake and the snake eats the
eagle, when summer eats winter and winter eats summer. The eaters are
eventually eaten. That which feeds will eventually become food. Predator
eventually becomes prey and prey eventually becomes predator. Both
predator and prey are necessary for life. Devas lose Swarga to the Asuras,
but eventually regain it. All victories are impermanent, all defeats
temporary. Everyone seeks Amrita, or eternal life. Everyone gets Sanjivani,
a chance to regenerate.
 Vishnu revealed to Garuda a world full of quarrelling siblings, all
grandchildren of Brahma and sons of Kashyapa: Devas and Asuras, Garuda
and Nagas, the elephant and the turtle. Ideally, the elephant and the turtle
are to serve as foundations of the earth. But by quarrelling, they were
creating instability and restlessness. This is how people waste their lives.
Being territorial, establishing pecking orders. One fights for success, to get
what is desired. The other fights for justice, to get what is denied. Both feel
entitled and assume nature belongs to either, when it belongs to neither. All
living creatures, humans included, are just food, to be consumed by the
hungry.
 But there is a way out from such an existence. This is what the thumb-
sized Valakhilya sages communicate as they hang upside down like bats,
like caterpillars within pupae before they turn into butterflies.
Long ago, Indra had mocked the tiny Valakhilyas, for even together they
could barely carry a twig. The sages said that Indra would meet his match in
an eagle called Garuda. Although Garuda would be stronger than Indra, he
would also be wiser. He would overpower Indra but not aspire to replace
him. He would have the pot of Amrita in his grasp but would not drink it.
He would seek wisdom, not wealth or power. That quest for knowledge had
brought Garuda to Vishnu.
Vishnu revealed that the dead end up hanging upside down over a
bottomless abyss, yearning for another chance to live so that they can utilise
the human life to do yoga, and break free of the cycle of rebirth. But once
they obtain that human life, that noble goal is forgotten. They are enchanted
by the senses (indriya) and their mind (manas) trapped by delusions (maya).
Driven by ambition and justice, they become fighting siblings, thus trapped
in the ever-turning wheel of life and death (samsara). Having wasted life, by
behaving like the foolish elephant and turtle, they return to hanging upside
down in death.

How did Vishnu know all this? Because he has witnessed infinite
creations and infinite destructions of infinite worlds filled with infinite life
forms. Vishnu is the Purusha, described in the Vedas, whose endless limbs
and limitless eyes are located everywhere in the cosmos.
Garuda passed on all his learnings to his father Kashyapa, who in turn
passed it on to Bhrigu, the sage who travelled the three worlds, from whom
it passed to Vasishtha, the guru of the solar dynasty, who told it to
Parashara, guru of the lunar dynasty, who passed it on to Vyasa, the
organiser of Vedic hymns, who imparted it on the storyteller Romaharshana,
who narrated it to the sages in the Naimisha forest, where this knowledge
came to be known as the Garuda Purana.

Atma, Dehi, Preta, Pitr

Known as ‘Purusha’ in the Vedic Samhita, ‘Prajapati’ in the Brahmana

literature and ‘Atma’ in the Upanishads, the immortal soul is the central
character in the story of death. Hindus divide the world into two parts: the
mortal half that we experience and the immortal half that we infer. Do we
return to this life again, like regenerating plants, reborn from their own
seed? Do we stay back in an eternal afterlife? We will never know. Just as
the assumption of infinity (ananta) helps humans solve mathematical
problems, faith in an immortal soul helps humans live a better, more
fulfilled life, facing death fearlessly.
The immortal soul, atma, is wrapped in mortal flesh, or deha. This makes
the soul a resident of the flesh, or dehi. Death is called ‘dehant’, as it is the
end (ant) of flesh (deha), not the soul. The atma outlives death. At the time
of birth, the atma wears a new body as if it were new clothes, and at the
time of death, it discards the old body like old clothes. So says the
Bhagavad Gita.
While experiencing life, the flesh experiences various emotions and
attachments, such as hunger and fear, jealousy and anger, frustration and
vengeance. Unlike animals that forget hunger when their bellies are full,
humans do not forget. Leech-like, they cling to memories and trauma. This
eclipses the atma, much like the dust that covers a crystal. Knowledge of
the tranquillity (ananda) of the immortal (sada) consciousness (chitta) is
obscured by arguments of ambition and aspiration and cravings for justice
and fairness. Ambition is about having more than what our siblings have.
Fairness is about having at least what our siblings have. We see ourselves
alone, separate from those around us. The other is opportunity or threat. The
self wants to overpower threats and consume opportunity. The self wants to
live at the cost of the other. The finite wants to master the infinite. The
limited wants to control the limitless. The mortal wants to direct the
immortal. This separation, this fracture, this disunion of jiva-atma and
param-atma is what turns the dehi into preta, or the ghost. Trapped in this
world, unable to be reborn, the preta become a ghost (bhuta). But it can go
to the land of Yama, and live as an ancestor (pitr) and await rebirth,
provided living relatives perform the proper death rituals, prescribed in the
Garuda Purana.
The Garuda Purana reached its final form probably around tenth century
ce. It contains layers of earlier ideas. New editions contain many later ideas
too. The rituals can be traced to Grihya-sutras of fifth century bce. The
concepts of liberation can be traced to the Upanishads also of the fifth
century bce. Earlier texts such as Brahmana, and Srauta-sutra refer to pinda
offerings to pitr. References to a gloomy hell, a radiant paradise, to paths
that take us to the land of the gods and the land of the dead are scattered
across Vedic literature. The description of the hells is found in the
Manusmriti, and many Puranas, such as the Markandeya Purana and the
Vamana Purana, dated to fifth century ce. The fearsome imagery of the
journey of the dead maps well with Tantric and folklore from the eight
century onwards. It resonates with the fourteenth-century Tibetan Book of
the Dead (Bardo Thodol), containing the visions of the Vajrayana master,
Padmasambhava, that describes the state between death and rebirth as the
stepping stones on a river between two shores, a metaphor shared with
Vedic literature.
The Garuda Purana is Vaishnav, but in Shaiva traditions these ideas were
also shared by Bhairava with the curious Goddess Chamunda. In Bhagavata
lore, we learn how Vishnu in the form of Krishna travelled to the kingdom
of the dead, ruled by Yama, known as Yama-loka, and brought back the
spirit of his guru’s son and the spirits of his elder brothers for the
momentary pleasure of parents who missed their dead children. The
narration of Vishnu to Garuda remains the most popular amongst textual
traditions.
 The narration of the preta’s journey that follows is primarily, but not
entirely, based on the Garuda Purana. When reading it, please keep in mind
that spiritual ideas are gender-neutral but, to communicate them, traditional
writings have used gendered language, symbols and metaphors of the
material reality. So, the preta and pitr are identified as male, and ancestors
are referred to as ‘forefathers’ while grandparents are ‘grandfathers’. We
have tried using gender-neutral language as far as possible.
The journey involves four phases and four destinations. The four phases
are: out of the body, wandering around the body, year-long journey to
Yama-loka, and finally, Yama-loka itself, also known as Pitr-loka. The four
destinations are: the hells (Naraka), paradise (Swarga), higher heavens and
eventually, rebirth out of Pitr-loka into the womb (yoni).
Phase 1: Out of Body

Even the old, the sick and the disabled, though unable to eat or digest, move
or speak, will still fight for life as they lie dying. Most defy the approach of
Yama’s emissaries, the dreaded Yama-duta, who appear before them as
ugly, gloomy and naked, red eyes and sharp nails, with grinding teeth,
bearing noose and rods.
The old human’s eyes would have weakened, their throat would be full of
phlegm, making sounds like death’s rattle drum. They would be unable to
communicate with the relatives who surround them. As the senses decay
and the mind numbs, Yama’s emissaries yank the preta out of their body.
Feeling the sting of a hundred scorpions, mouth full of saliva, throat full of
foam, their heart races and they shed excrement as the preta leaves their
body. The preta, which is the size of their thumb, looks longingly at the
flesh left behind as it is dragged away.

Preta leaves the lifeless body more easily when the body is offered to
agni during cremation (mukha-agni), and appropriate Vedic hymns
(antyeshti) coax Agni to gently burns the flesh, and the burning skull is
cracked open with a stick at the brahmarandra, the top of the cranium.

Phase 2: Wandering around the Body

The preta is lost without its residence. So, after leaving the body, it lingers
around the corpse, and in the crematorium, after the body is gone. The
Yama-duta catch it like a beast and beat it if it resists capture, as hunters do.
The reluctant preta is yanked towards Yama’s abode like a convict,
dragged if it does not walk, goaded and pushed, tormented with descriptions
of the many hells where it may be tortured. Thirsty and hungry, it walks the
path to death’s domain, burning in the light, tormented by the sun, by forest
fires and hot winds, deprived of shelter and water, whipped relentlessly by
fierce winds on a burning path, towards the dark and gloomy realm
of Yama.
 A lamp is lit at the time of death, giving hope to the lost preta that it has
not been forgotten. The temporary body created by the nava-shradh in the
ten days after cremation enables it to eat the offerings on its year-long
journey that is to follow.
It is memories (smara) and yearnings (kama) that cause these miseries.
Birds and animals face no such trauma as they have no memories nor
desires. The wise who have let go of memories do not suffer either.
Those that escape the clutches of Yama-duta remain trapped in the
crematorium, like ghosts (bhuta) hanging upside down in the likeness of the
aerial roots of the banyan tree, a favourite haunt of ghosts. Older abandoned
ghosts turn into pishachas who torment more recent pretas. Unlucky ones
are captured by sorcerers and turned into slaves (vetala).
The fresh preta has a subtle (ativahika) body made of space, air and heat
but it needs a temporary body that can receive food during its long journey
to Yama-loka. The ten-part ritual of nava-shradh, mimicking the ten lunar
months of pregnancy, is designed to give the new preta that temporary body.

Phase 3: Year-long journey

The lucky ones walk the path of the gods. Most walk the path to the land of
the dead, which is a miserable stretch: no shade of trees, no fruit-bearing
plants, multiple burning suns, gusts of cold winds that strike like iron
whips, a road full of thorns, stinging scorpions, fire, rabid tigers and dogs,
hungry owls that peck, mosquitoes that bite, bogs full of leeches, dark
wells, hot sands, mounds of ember, showers of blood, weapons,
thunderbolts, lakes of pus and blood and excrement that are infested with
crocodiles, mists of smoke and flames, vultures circling in the sky, and pits
of venomous snakes and rodents.
 On this path, the wicked who never valued dharma are dragged and
pulled by their nose or ear or back with ropes, chains and hooks while being
pecked by crows, beaten by Yama’s messengers and vomiting blood that
they are forced to drink. They walk, mourning and howling at having
squandered human life by ignoring dharma.
Some of these bad actions include: not being generous, not making gifts,
not worshipping gods, not respecting sages, not making pilgrimages, not
helping people, not creating opportunities for others, not digging wells and
tanks, not sharing food or donating cows, not respecting lessons from the
Vedas, Shastras and Puranas, not respecting elders, not being faithful to
one’s spouse, not fasting and practising restraint.
In its long journey, the preta reaches many cities, each of which engulfs it
with memories and missed opportunities. It regrets loss of family, friends,
estates and titles. At every place, it can rest, eat the rice and water provided
by living relatives. Yama’s minions torment it for wasting its human life and
mock it if the preta’s relatives have not provided for its food and travel.
 In the sixth month, the preta must cross the dreaded river Vaitarni, which
separates the land of the dead from the land of the living. The river is wide,
with piles of skulls and bones and rotting flesh on either bank, its waters
full of blood and pus. If the preta has given a gift of a cow in its life, it is
entitled to a boat across the waters. If it has not, Yama’s minions, who fly
above the river, will drag him through the waters by piercing its lip with a
hook.
Over the course of a year, having received sixteen offerings at sixteen
stations, the spirit finally reaches the city of Yama. These sixteen offerings
of the ekodisthta shradh are either offered in sixteen ceremonies through the
year, or on the eleventh day after the funeral, for the sake of convenience.
On the twelfth day after the funeral, the sapinda-karana ritual transforms
the preta into pitr, and the journey is complete. In this ritual, three names
are invoked: the parent who died before, the grandparent before that, the
great-grandparent before that too. Here, the preta takes the position of the
first pitr, the first pitr becomes the second pitr, the second pitr becomes the
third pitr, the third pitr becomes one of the all-gods (vishwadeva)— its
name forgotten, and its memory lost to enable its release.
Sapinda (common, or shared, pinda) refers to common ancestors.
Siblings and cousins are referred to as ‘sapinda’ because they share
ancestors in common with one. Marriage among sapinda is forbidden in
many communities and considered by them to be incest, a behaviour
acceptable in animals but best avoided by humans. Hindus differentiate
between humans and animals through various rites of passage that
constitute the samskara. Samsara is natural; samskara is cultural. In
samsara, there is no funeral or marriage, no clothing or trade, only eating,
reproducing and dying. In samskara, there is funeral, marriage, education,
clothing and trade.

Phase 4: Yama-loka

As per Vastu-shastra, there are ten directions: above, below, four cardinal
and four ordinal directions. Indra is on the east, Kubera on the north, Varuna
on the west. The south-west direction is the residence of Goddess Niritti,
sometimes merged with Goddess Chamunda, and associated with Mrityu,
goddess of death, who separates the flesh and the spirit. The south-east is
the abode of Agni, the fire, that consumes the flesh eventually and lights the
path towards the land of the dead. And so, it is fitting that Yama-loka is in
the south.
The scribe Chitragupta receives his information on the deeds and
misdeeds, merits and demerits of all beings from Shravana and Shravani,
the ones who hear everything and know the deeds of everyone everywhere
and at all times. The house of Chitragupta is surrounded by the quarters of
various diseases, from fever to dysentery and rheumatism to pox.
In front of his house is that of Yama himself, who has all the appearance
markers of a great king, seated under an umbrella on a bejewelled throne.
Around him are the sages and the greatest of kings. His house is full of
music and banners. And he holds in his hand a conch shell, a discus, a mace
and a sword. His face radiates joy and bliss. This is his good form, meant
for those who follow dharma. For the wicked ones who deviate from the
path of dharma, Yama manifests his terrible form: on a buffalo, giant and
gloomy, rod in hand, unsmiling.
 Four roads lead to Yama’s house. Those destined for hell for living a life
at the cost of others walk the southern path. Those who have been generous
all their lives, offering fuel in winter, water in summer, grain during
drought, shelter in the rains, nourishing the hungry and thirsty, go by the
eastern path. Those who have been brave, fighting thieves and plunderers,
and have died defending the weak, walk on the northern path. Those who
have lived a life of restraint, repaying all debts, without being jealous,
bitter, angry, hateful or unfaithful, walk on the western path.
 Yama’s doorkeeper Dharmadhvaja announces the presence of everyone
who arrives at his door. Those who have been good and honest enjoy
benevolence. The bad and the dishonest suffer malevolence and terrible
tortures. Yama does not care if one is rich or poor, strong or weak, or about
tribe, caste or lineage—all he cares about is actions. These are actions
witnessed by the sun and the moon, the dawn and the dusk, and the five
elements, and communicated by the Shravanas and the Shravanis,
documented by Chitragupta, and known to Yama.
 Yama tells all beings that, after a brief stay in heaven or hell—where they
will enjoy or suffer the fruits of their actions, good or bad— they will
obtain human life again, and another chance to realise the impermanence of
the flesh, wealth, fortune and relationships. Yama advises all to live with
restraint and generosity, going beyond the self to help others if they wish to
eventually walk the highest path beyond rebirths. Not everyone gets a
human life though. Some people lived lives so filled with bad actions that
they are reborn as animals, birds and insects.
Some say that the temporary stay in Swarga, full of pleasures, and
Naraka, full of tortures, is a preview of the spirit’s future life, of the
temporary pleasures and pain he will experience in human life. Others say
that those who enjoy Swarga for their merits will be reborn to wipe out
whatever demerits they may have accumulated, while those who suffer
Naraka for their demerits will be reborn to enjoy whatever little merits they
have accumulated. This enables Yama to balance his books. That is why the
balance scale is called Dharmakanta, or the needle of dharma—another
name for Yama.
The thirteenth-day shradh is a time of festivity, for feeding friends,
family and an odd number of Brahmins, to mark the end of the preta’s
journey to Yama-loka and its transformation into a pitr, ready to receive the
offerings made during the parvana-shradh, and await rebirth.

Destination 1: Naraka

Before rebirth, the pitr must experience various hells, each one designed for
a crime committed during the last birth. This is the list of hells in the
Garuda Purana, grouped by crimes.
 There are various tortures prescribed: with fire, weapons, acid, animals,
serpents, birds, or being beaten, smashed to smithereens, pushed from great
heights into pits of sewage and being thrown into rivers of pus. All of these
are designed to prevent people from violating their own bodies, and the
trust and property of others, and to get householders and kings to do their
duties. We find in the ancient texts such as the Mahabharata, Ramayana,
Agni Purana and Garuda Purana a great rage against corrupt kings,
oppressors, those who torment animals, are proud, stingy, mean, adulterous,
abusive, those who brag, insult, rape or commit bestiality, and even those
who indulge in oral sex.

Destination 2: Swarga

The Garuda Purana and other Puranas lay a greater emphasis on hells than
on heavens. Experience had told the sages that humans respond better to
fear than pleasure. Elaborate versions of multiple heavens are found in Jain
and Buddhist literature. As in Jainism and Buddhism, the paradise of the
gods (Devas) is distinguished as the higher heavens— Vaikuntha, Kailasa,
Goloka and Gauriloka—a place for those who have immersed themselves in
devotion and outgrown all desires.
 Known in Buddhism as the abode of thirty-three gods, Swarga is the
eternal abode of the Devas, where good people are welcome and are fed all
kinds of food, offered the drink Soma, and invited to witness the dance of
apsaras, the song of the Kinnaras and the music of the Gandharvas. This is a
place of luxury and indulgence, and of wish-fulfilment. There is the wish-
fulfilling tree, Kalpa-taru or Kalpavriksha; the wish-fulfilling cow, Kama-
dhenu; the wish-fulfilling jewel, Chinta-mani; the vessel Akshaya-patra
overflowing with gold and grain; and the garden of eternal delights,
Nandan-kanan. Here there is no decay, degeneration or death. Yearnings for
such a place are found in the Rig Veda (9.113.7) as the gods are offered the
Soma drink, ‘Where there is light always, place me in that unperishable,
undecaying world.’
Those with meritorious deeds in their credit, those who were generous
with gifts and compliments, kind and compassionate, created opportunities
for others, were fair and just, performed yagna regularly and fed the gods
and the ancestors, and gave back what they received from nature and
culture would get to taste the joys of heaven. As long as merits last, one
stays in Swarga, and then one tumbles down. Thus, we learn of the kings
Yayati and Indradyumna, who were asked to leave paradise after they ran
out of merits. Yayati regained heaven when his daughter and grandchildren
shared their merits with him. Indradyumna returned when he discovered a
turtle who remembered his good deeds. In the Mahabharata, Mahabhisha is
also cast out of Indra’s heaven because he displays lust at the sight of the
beautiful Ganga. He is reborn as Shantanu, whose heart is broken by Ganga.
Those who strive for permanent bliss seek refuge in the higher heavens.

Destination 3: Higher Heavens

In the Mahabharata, there is the story of Rishi Mugdala whom Indra had
invited to Swarga. But Mugdala refuses. He says, ‘Swarga is for those who
have earned merit by performing yagna and feeding the gods, the ancestors
as well as those dependent on him, family and friends, servants, teachers,
sages, even guests and strangers. But the stay in Swarga is temporary. I
want a higher heaven, where t is permanent.’
With the rise of the devotional practice of bhakti, and the composition of
Puranic literature, this higher heaven becomes specific. The two major
heavens are the Kailasa of Shiva and the Vaikuntha of Vishnu. Hermits are
welcomed to Mount Kailasa, a place of no hunger—one where Shiva’s bull
does not seek grass and Shakti’s tiger does not hunt the bull. Ganesha’s rat
is safe from Shiva’s serpent, coiled around his neck, and the snake is safe
from Kartikeya’s peacock. In Vishnu’s Vaikuntha, there is plenty for all, as
it is located in the ocean of milk (a metaphor for abundance). Unlike Indra’s
Swarga, constantly under siege by Asuras, there is no battle or conflict in
Vaikuntha.
 There are other heavens. There is Brahma-loka for the sages. For the
women who have been faithful to their husbands, there is the paradise of
Gauri-loka. In Saket, the heaven of Sita and Ram, everyone enjoys the
eternal Ram-rajya where dharma is respected by all. In Go-loka, the heaven
of Krishna, are the cows that voluntarily give milk and fill the ocean of
milk. For those who worship Ganesha, there is Ikshu-vana, or the forest of
sugarcane, and for worshippers of Hanuman, there is Kadali-vana, the forest
of plantain. From these higher heavens, there is no return to the world of
death and suffering. There is only the eternal bliss of enjoying God’s face.
However, should the residents show the slightest sign of ego, jealousy,
hatred, anger, pride, contempt or attachment, they are cast out, and forced to
experience rebirth until it is time again to return to the higher heavens.
Thus, we hear of the Yoginis who were cursed and cast out of Kailasa and
came to be statues embedded on the throne of King Vikramaditya. They
passed on the knowledge of Vikramaditya’s kingship to King Bhoja, and
were then allowed to return to Kailasa. And in the Bhagavata Purana, we
learn of Jaya and Vijaya, the doorkeepers of Vaikuntha, who were cursed by
the child-sages, the four Sanat-kumara, for not letting them in. Jaya and
Vijaya were reborn as two Asuras (Hiranakashipu and Hiranayaksha), two
Rakshasas (Ravana and Kumbhakarna) and two humans (Shishupala and
Dantavakra) before they returned to Vaikuntha. So, nothing is essentially
permanent, it would appear.

Destination 4: Pitr-loka to Yoni

The ancestors wait in Pitr-loka patiently until it is time for rebirth. Here,
they accept offerings made during shradh. As per the Mahabharata, but not
the Garuda Purana, they hang upside down over the bottomless pit called
Put, hoping the living will produce children, who will save them from that
condition.
 Birth is really rebirth. A new life is an old life, carrying the karmic
baggage of previous lives, its memories, aspirations and frustrations. After
consulting Chitragupta’s records, Yama dispassionately determines where
one would be born, what would be determined by nature and what by
culture. Some believe our gender, sexuality, parents, fortunes are all
determined by the karma of the dead (nature). Others believe it is
determined by the karma of the living (nurture). Here is a short sample of
the list of crimes that, according to the Garuda Purana, impact future lives.
 Rebirth is only possible when the living relative produces children. That
is when pitra-hrinn, or debt to ancestors, is repaid. A man needs a woman
and a woman needs a man to repay this debt. A man performing parvana-
shradh, and calling three generations of ancestors, assures them that he will
enable rebirth by marrying. Those who do not marry, or have no children,
have to perform special shradh in pilgrim spots for themselves. There is a
way out for all. Ancestors who feel forgotten often trouble the living and so
special shradh rituals such as Narayana-bali must be performed to calm
them down. In Narayana-bali the angry pitr are elevated to Vaikuntha by the
grace of Vishnu. Pleased, they shower blessings on the living.
Vedic texts enumerate rites of passage to enable the birth of children.
This includes marriage (vivaha), which is a social event. Then, at the
appropriate time, the husband is expected to be intimate with his wife. This
is the samskara of conception (garbha-dana). Marriage was separated from
conception, for sometimes the bride and groom are not mature enough to be
intimate. Sometimes, the husband lacks the capacity to make his wife
pregnant. In ancient times, women were allowed to go to other men to make
a baby. This practice was called niyoga. For example, in the Mahabharata,
King Vichitravirya dies prematurely and Vyasa is sent to his widows,
Ambika and Ambalika, so that they can become mothers of the future rulers
of Hastinapur.
The Garuda Purana as well as several Tantric texts elaborate the process
by which the pitr enters the womb of a woman and gets embodied. Details
vary. The penis needs to rise in pleasure and excitement, and enter a
consenting, joyful womb, filled with happy vibrations, and leave the white
seed within before withdrawing. In art, when the woman is above the man,
it indicates her consent.
 When the white seed of man joins the red seed of woman, the bleeding of
the womb stops, and a few days later, a new child is conceived. The white
seed is ever ready to turn into a new life, but the red seed, like nature, is
changing constantly. The window of opportunity is short and difficult to
control, and the white seed struggles to succeed. What happens in the womb
imitates the stresses outside the womb: the uncontrollable passage of time
(kala) and the struggles with rival sperms.
From the father, the embryo gets bones and nerves. From the mother, it
gets flesh and blood. When the white seed is strong, a male child is born.
When the red seed is strong, a female child is born. When both seeds are of
equal strength, the queer child is born. In some, the flesh may be
ambiguous. In others, the sexuality will not match the flesh.
Over ten lunar months, the food consumed by the mother transforms into
the five elements that develop into multiple layers (kosha): flesh, breath,
sensations, emotions and intelligence. Earth gives skin, bones, hair, flesh
and nerves. Water gives saliva, urine, sperm, marrow and blood. Fire
enables hunger, thirst, desire, sloth and sleep. Wind enables bending,
walking, running, jumping and stretching. Ether enables speech, thought,
sensations, emotions and delusions.
Multiple tissues (dhatu) develop in the body: lymph, blood, flesh, nerves,
bones, marrow and genital fluids. Some sense organs also receive stimulus
from the world (gyan-indriya) outside: ear, eyes, nose, skin and tongue. The
body’s action organs respond to these inputs from the world (karma-
indriya): hands, feet, mouth, anus and genitals.
The body which engages with the world around us is our outer reality.
Within is the inner reality. Inputs received from the outside world generates
sensations in the mind (manas), emotions in the heart (chitta) and thoughts
in the head (buddhi) that are judged by the ego (aham), all invisible aspects
of the inner reality.
There are multiple levels of awareness locked in the nodes of the spine
(chakra): fear of death, craving for pleasure, hunger for food, yearning for
love, communication, insight and wisdom. The left side of the body is
controlled by the right side of the head, which shines like the sun (pingala),
and the right side is controlled by the left side of the head, which waxes and
wanes like the moon (ida). Each chakra is connected to every part and pore
of the body through channels (nadi)—the central one (shushumna) offering
the coiled serpent (kundalini) a chance to rise and awaken the bud in the
head to bloom like a thousand-petalled lotus.
 In the womb, the child remembers its past lives, and hopes to make the
best of the new opportunity of a human life. But the trauma of childbirth
causes it to forget. This death of old memories, which would have aided its
quest for liberation, is mourned over ten days. That is why, for ten days
after the birth of the child, the household is deemed impure, unworthy of
touch. This period of purification is called ‘sutaka’. It mirrors the period of
purification in the ten days after death. At both times—birth and death—the
land of the dead and the land of the living come in close contact, first in the
womb, then at the birthing couch, and finally at the deathbed and cremation
ground.
OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter 2

Rituals for the Dead

In which we learn of rituals such as antyeshti, sapinda-karana, shradh
and pinda-daan designed to help transform the preta into pitr

There are many rituals for the dead in Hinduism. They all presuppose the
journey of the dead described in the Garuda Purana. But there is diversity
across history, geography and communities.
These rituals can be traced to three thousand years ago. But they have
evolved over time. Here is a summary. The Rig Veda provides funeral
hymns. The Shrauta-Sutra invites ancestors to meals. The Grihyasutra
elaborates the shradh. The Dharma-shastra turns Brahmins into
representatives of the dead. The Ramayana marks the shift from burying
ashes and bones to immersing them in a river. The Puranas propagate the
idea of pinda-daan at pilgrim spots and Bhakti literature prescribes chanting
God’s name to liberate the soul.
What follows is an overview of these diverse rituals for the Hindu
ancestor. The major rituals include:

1. Funeral rituals

a. Antyeshti: cremation and casting the bones and ashes in a river

b. Nava-shradh: the ten-part creation of a temporary body for the preta for
ten days after the funeral, often compressed into a single ritual

c. Ekodishta-shradh: providing food and other provisions for preta’s

journey, over one year, now compressed to the eleventh-day ritual. The
annual death ceremony is also called ekodistha shradh, as it focuses on a
single person.
d. Sapinda-karana: the transformation of the preta into a pitr, at the end of
the year, now performed on the twelfth day

e. Shradh-bhog: the feast to mark the end of mourning and inauspicious

period with the transformation of preta into pitr, where an odd number of
Brahmins are given gifts and fed

f. Varshik-shradh: the annual death anniversary ritual feeding of the dead

2. Feeding rituals
a. Parvana-shradh: routine feeding of the collective of ancestors daily,
monthly and, most importantly, annually, during Pitrpaksha

b. Tirtha-shradh: feeding of ancestors at a pilgrim spot, to mark the end of

death anniversary rituals

c. Narayana-bali: special feeding to appease ancestors who died by violence

or accident, and so are angry, dissatisfied, restless and cause misfortunes,
as indicated by astrologers (pitru-dosh)

d. Vriddhi-shradh: to celebrate happy occasions with auspicious ancestors

(nandimukha-pitr) when the usual inversion of ritual orientation
associated with death is not conducted

3. Chautha: memorial meeting

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 When the ritual is described in the manuals, it is assumed that the
performer (karta) is the dead person’s son. A jivaputrik is one whose father
is alive and is performing rituals for someone else, either for his mother or
his maternal grandfather, who had no sons. Nowadays rituals are performed
by women too. Before the advent of television, funeral rituals were known
only to men, as women were not allowed to enter crematoriums or attend
feeding ceremonies.

Antyeshti

Antyeshti is also known as ‘antim kriya’ or ‘antim sanskar’, the last rite of
passage. It involves taking the body to the crematorium, lighting the funeral
pyre, breaking the skull, and ends with the collection of ashes and bones to
immerse it in a river.
 Hindu cremation must take place soon after death, preferably within
twenty-four hours, to enable the quick departure of the preta to the Pitrloka.
Many Hindus, especially the ‘upper’ castes in North India, prefer cremating
the dead. The cremation ground is usually located on the southern side of
the village, the direction ruled by Yama, and preferably near a water body.
Hindus who choose to bury the dead sometimes conduct shradh rituals,
nevertheless.
Children, however, are buried under trees in the cremation ground
(smashan-bhoomi), or cast into a river, their bodies consumed by earth and
water and worms, fish and turtles. When young people die before marriage,
rituals for them are different, and simpler, as their preta is treated kindly by
Yama-duta.
The corpse is not addressed by name. At home, the body is placed in the
north–south axis, with feet pointing south, indicating its movement towards
Yama-loka. However, during cremation, the feet point north, so that the
preta leaving from the aperture in the skull travels immediately and straight
in the southward direction, towards Yama-loka.

Some families pour a little Ganga-jal (water of the Ganga) into the mouth
of the dead before the body is carried to the cremation ground. The body is
typically wrapped in cloth. If the dead is a woman whose husband is still
alive, she is bedecked as a bride. The body is anointed with sandal paste to
indicate a householder’s life, and ash to indicate a hermit’s life. Sandal
paste is made using water and ash with fire. This water-and-fire connection
is a recurring theme in the rituals. Water is feminine, fire is masculine.
Water is Ganga, fire is Shiva. Sandal paste is Vishnu, ash is Shiva. Fire and
water from the house are taken in pots to the crematorium.
Traditionally, the rituals were performed by men. Now, women also
participate. At the cremation ground, the chief mourner goes around the
body counterclockwise, carrying a water pot on his left shoulder. The pot is
cracked three times so that water pours out in three streams to his back as
he walks. After three rounds, the mourner drops the pot behind him. Thus,
symbolically, the ghost is told to let go of his three bodies: social, physical
and mental.
 The body is covered with ghee, that is, clarified butter. Five balls of rice
or barley, the pinda, are placed on the head, shoulders and palms, to serve
as food for the Yama-duta. Gold is also placed on the body. This was later
collected by the Chandala, the traditional keepers of the crematorium, who
have a right over everything given to the dead. The karta circles the body in
a counterclockwise direction as he sets the pyre alight. This is called the
mukha-agni, the giving of fire. If the deceased is male, the fire is lit from
the head. In the case of women, it is lit from the feet. To stoke the pyre,
straw, coconut husk and cow dung cakes are added to the wood. Hymns
from the Rig Veda (10.16.1)are chanted, ‘Don’t burn him entirely; don’t
scorch his body; don’t singe his skin. When cooked to readiness, impel him
forth to the forefathers.’
As the flames consume the body, the chief mourner is asked to take a
bamboo pole and smash the skull. This allows the preta to escape the body.
Nowadays, in electric crematoriums, this ritual is not possible, so it is
symbolically performed by overturning the pot of fire on the chest of the
corpse before it is taken into the incinerator. After the rituals, when it is
time to leave the cremation ground, no one turns back. It is time to let go.
Those who visit the cremation ground are asked to bathe before returning
home. They also touch a cow, some grain, milk and images of gods to
restore their purity.
 In the old days, the Chandala kept watch over the funeral pyre, ensuring
that the body burnt until it was consumed. He kept dogs and crows from
grabbing a charred limb. His income came from the services he provided.
He had rights over everything that was given to the dead and survived the
flames, including gold and gems.
The next day, milk is poured on the embers. Then the ash and bones are
collected in a pot, tied in a cloth and hung from a tree or a hook on the wall,
ensuring that it does not touch the ground. At a suitable date in the future,
these ashes and bones are cast into a river (asthi-visarjan), where the final
shradh ritual is performed.
No one visits the house of the dead. Even the relatives of the dead who
do not live in the same house are considered impure until the sapindakarana
ritual is completed on the twelfth day. This period of impurity is called
‘sutaka’. Post-cremation rituals used to go on for a year but currently are
done within thirteen days, oftentimes in one day.
Nava-shradh

Between the cremation and the sapindakarana ritual, the preta is granted a
temporary body to enable it to eat and drink on its journey to the land of the
dead. This is the purpose of the nava-shradh, ‘nava’ meaning new or the
first shradh for the recently deceased.

After the preta has escaped the body through the cracked skull, it lingers
in the crematorium, either in a nearby pipal tree or a rock (preta-shila). A
pot filled with drinking water is tied to a tree branch, with a lamp hanging
above it and some seeds scattered at the foot of the tree. The lamp above
guides the preta and the seeds below germinate, giving hope of rebirth to
the now terrified ghost which has a subtle (ativahika) body made of air
(vayu), space (akash) and heat (tejas). The preta can see and hear but cannot
eat. For that, a new temporary body (jatana deha) is needed. It is created
through puraka over ten days (ten rituals) of the nava-shradh. This body
enables the preta to travel to Yama-loka and become a pitr eventually.
In the days that follow, the karta holds one mashed rice ball in the right
hand every day, over which he pours water containing black sesame seeds.
On the first day, one spoonful of water is poured. On the second day, two
spoonfuls. By the tenth day, ten spoonfuls of water are poured on the pinda.
Each day, this ritual creates a different part of the body for the preta. With
this body, the ghost can travel to the land of ancestors. It will now also be
able to experience hunger and thirst, and receive the food offered by
relatives. The ten-day ritual is a reminder of the ten lunar months of
pregnancy when the ghost gets a new body in a mother’s womb. Nowadays,
these ten-day rituals are conducted on the day of the funeral itself.
 During this period, the Preta-kalpa of the Garuda Purana is read entirely.
Translated in local language, it describes the journey of the dead to Yama-
loka in gory detail. This journey takes a year, and it involves sixteen resting
spots and crossing the river Vaitarni. The journey is terrifying, made worse
if the dead are not provided with the comforts of travel, including food,
footwear, clothes, bags and mattresses. The mourners are asked to give this
to Brahmins, who stand in for the dead. This, the karta is assured, will make
the journey to Yama-loka pleasant for their loved ones. The mourners are
reminded that the preta could be dragged across the dreaded river Vaitarni
by flying Yama-duta who use curved nails to hook them by their lips. This
suffering can be prevented by giving the Brahmin a cow, the tail of which
the preta can grab to stay afloat and swim across. If gold is given, even a
boat can be made available.
Ekodishta-shradh

From the eleventh day onwards, the fully formed preta is offered food and
water by the living offspring for its long journey to the land of the dead.
The food is mashed rice, for the preta’s body has everything but teeth so
that it cannot bite anyone.
Traditionally, simple rituals would happen every day of the year until the
sapinda-karana ritual, with elaborate rituals on new-moon nights and
additional rituals that add up to a total of 360 daily rituals and sixteen
monthly rituals. Nowadays this is done on the eleventh day itself using
sixteen mashed rice balls and 360 barley cakes. Since this ritual takes place
in memory of the deceased, it is called ekodishta-shradh, as opposed to
sarva-pitra shradh that is for all ancestors and not any one in particular.
The ritual involves sixteen pindas. The jump from ten pindas of the nava-
shradh to sixteen of the ekodishta-shradh also indicates the rising hunger of
the preta. The number also refers to the sixteen days of Pitr-paksha, which
begins from the full moon in the month of Bhadrapada and ends with the
following new moon marked.
The number ‘sixteen’ harks back to the creation hymn from the
Shatapatha Brahmana, which tells us that creation involves the Prajapati
being split into sixteen parts: from the golden egg (Hiranya-garbha)
emerges two genders, the day and the night, the three worlds, the four
directions and the five elements.
During this ritual, the standard ritual orientation is changed. Instead of
east, the karta faces south. The sacred thread and upper garment hang on the
right shoulder, the left knee rests on the ground, the movements are
counterclockwise, the left hand is sometimes used, and water is always
poured away from the body over the outstretched right thumb.
Brahmins are meant to represent the dead and are invited in odd numbers.
They are given gifts such as clothes, footwear, money, mattresses, bags,
utensils and grain. They haggle a lot. This is a ritual to indicate the
dissatisfaction of the dead. The Brahmins invited to funeral rituals are
differentiated from Brahmins involved in marriage rituals, thread
ceremonies and temple worship. These old hierarchies are slowly losing
their relevance though.

Sapinda-karana
The sapinda-karana ritual, which transforms the preta into a pitr, was
originally performed a year after a person’s death—the duration of the
preta’s journey to the Pitr-loka, that is, Yama-loka. It is the last of the
sixteen ekodishta-shradh. This is now done on the twelfth day after the
cremation. Thus, rituals adapt to the realities of the day.
Siblings and cousins with common parents, grandparents and great-
grandparents are called ‘sapinda’, for they offer pinda to common ancestors.
These are the relatives who are affected by sutaka or impurity during birth
or death in family.
The men of the group are encouraged to shave their heads as a mark of
mourning when someone dies. Hair has great significance in Hinduism. It is
an indicator of fertility and virility. The well-oiled and combed hair
indicates domestication and culture. The unkempt hair indicates wild,
untamed energy. The matted hair of yogis indicates power over the material
world. The fully shaved head indicates complete renunciation and is
reserved for monks and widows. As this is considered inauspicious in
Hinduism, the shaven head is covered with a cloth. In funeral rituals, when
the head is shaved, care is taken that a tuft of hair is left on to remind them
they are not hermits but householders. They must return to the world of the
living. It has been observed that funerals often cause people to temporarily
lose interest in life. This is called ‘smashana vairagya’, or the detachment
that is provoked by witnessing cremations.
For the sapinda-karana, the preta’s pinda is made as an oblong rice cake.
Three rice balls are also made, representing the preta of the father,
grandfather and great-grandfather of the deceased, who live on earth (bhu),
the atmosphere (bhuvah) and the sky (svahah). The ancestors before them
exist in the transcendent space beyond the sky with the all-gods
(vishwadeva). These four rice balls are mixed and mashed together to create
three new balls. The son who performs the ritual is either blindfolded or
made to look away during this ritual because, as the process of
transformation takes place, the dreaded portal between the lands of the
living and the dead is open. With this ritual, the preta becomes a first-
generation pitr. His father’s pitr becomes a second-generation pitr, and his
grandfather’s pitr a third-generation pitr. And his great-grandfather’s pitr
goes to the great beyond, to join the vishwadeva. Sometimes four pots of
water are kept, three for the old ancestors and one for the recently deceased.
The water is mixed to ritually change status of the recently deceased. When
the preta becomes a pitr, the journey is complete.

Once this journey is concluded, the ash and bones from the cremation, all
the funeral ritual objects, including the pots used to water the preta, the
geminated sesame and cooked rice, are immersed in a river, preferably
Ganga, or at a pilgrim spot like Pehowa, Gaya, Nashik or Rameshwaram.
Until the karta, the chief performer, can go to a pilgrimage spot and
conduct the final shradh, all this material is kept tied above the ground.
Until then, each year, on the death anniversary of the deceased, pindadaan is
offered to the dead. Since the ritual focusses on a single dead relative, and
not to the ancestral collective, it is called ekodishta-shradh.

Shradh-bhog

On the thirteenth day a huge feast is organised to mark the successful

completion of post-cremation ceremonies. The preta has become a pitr and
is safe in Yama-loka and will visit the land of the living with other ancestors
at ritually scheduled times. Traditional meals served at this ceremony use
ancient recipes from before the advent of tomato, potato and chillies. They
usually contain yam and pepper. Nowadays, the favourite food of the
deceased is cooked so that relatives remember him fondly.

An odd number of Brahmins are invited for the feast. Their satisfaction
refers to satisfaction of the ancestors. This practice of using Brahmins as
mediators and substitutes for ancestors, and not just as ritual priests, began
with the Grihya-sutra and is endorsed by the Dharma-shastra.

Tirtha-shradh

At one time, the ritual of feeding ancestors (pinda-daan, or pitra-yagna) was

part of grand public ceremonies. But they became increasingly private and
domestic as society became cosmopolitan. With time, families found it
difficult to perform too many shradh rituals. So, to terminate the ritual,
Hindus are advised to travel to pilgrim spots such as Gaya, Kurukshetra,
Haridwar, Kashi, Nashik, Puri, Srirangam and Rameswaram, take a bath in
the waters and then perform shradh there.
In these places, the funeral offerings are given to God, who offers them
endlessly to the ancestors. This belief became widespread in the last
thousand years, with the popularity of temples and pilgrim routes. We know
this because the 2,000-year-old Dharma-shastra does not explicitly refer
either to temples or pilgrimages. But these themes become very important
in commentaries to the very same Dharma-shastra, which come about a
thousand years later. This indicates that the orthodox Vedic Brahmins
endorsed temple practices much later.

Parvana-shradh

Shradh means feeding the ancestors with reverence (shraddha). Feeding a

single ancestor is called ekodishta-shradh, while ceremonial feeding the
ancestral collective (sarva-pitr) during special occasions is called parvana-
shradh. Some feed the ancestors every day. Some do it every new moon
day, or on the ninth day of the waning moon. Most commonly, the feeding
takes place on Pitr-paksha, the fortnight of ancestors. Here offerings are
made to dead parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, to ancestors who
existed before them, as well as to all others who reside in the land of the
dead.
 The feeding of the ancestors begins first by feeding the gods, then the
sages and finally the ancestors. At each stage, the karta takes up different
positions and performs different gestures as described below.
The pinda representing the ancestor is placed on kusha grass pointing
southwards, representing a sacred mat. The ancestor is offered many things:
lamp (dipa), incense (dhup), threads to indicate cloth (vastra), cosmetics
(indicated by collyrium, vermillion, turmeric, sandal paste), rice for
nourishment, sesame for flavour and ease of digestion, and water for thirst.
In the old days, ancestors were offered not just rice but also other grains,
cereals and beans. They were also offered their favourite food: fish as well
as meat of wild and domestic birds and animals, including the meat of carp,
crane and goat. These practices are mentioned in the Dharma-shastra. But
today, these ideas are ignored—even denied by religious leaders who want
to promote the belief that Hinduism is essentially vegetarian. In Bhasa’s
Pratima Nataka, a Sanskrit play based on the Ramayana, Ravana disguises
himself as a Brahmin and tells Ram that, to feed his dead father, he must
offer the meat of the rare golden deer. While Ram is away pursuing that
deer, Ravana abducts Sita.
Narayana-bali

Sometimes, shradh is performed when misfortune strikes the family and

astrologers suspect that it is the result of the ancestors being angry. Angry
ancestors include those who died in violence or accidents and for whom
proper rituals were not performed. Or they can be ancestors whose wishes
are not fulfilled and who are unable to move on to the next life.
 To appease these angry ancestors the Narayana-bali shradh is performed.
Due attention is given to forgotten or overlooked pitr. Done well, it can
even elevate the ancestors from Pitr-loka to Vaikuntha, the abode of Vishnu,
and so bring fortune back into the lives of the living.
In the Garuda Purana, this ritual was instituted by King Babruvahana.
While on a hunting trip, he encountered hungry and angry ghosts in the
forests. Feeling sorry for them he decided to perform rituals to feed them
even though they were not his own relatives. A good king cares not just for
the living but also for the dead, not just for his subjects but also strangers.
 The Bhavishya Purana recommends other rites for those who died and
whose body could not be found. Effigies are made either using kusha grass
or vegetables. They are cremated and shradh rituals are performed. This is
done after waiting for twelve years for a person to return. If he does return
after his ‘funeral rites’, he has to undergo ‘samskara’ rites where he is
symbolically reborn and then symbolically remarried.

Vriddhi-shradh

Some people want ancestors to attend important celebrations in the family,

such as marriage and childbirth, and invite them to eat. This is the
vriddhishradh, nandi-shradh or abhyudayashradh, a unique ritual among the
various shradh rites, because the ancestors are welcomed as pure beings.
That is why an even number of Brahmins are fed, unlike an odd number of
Brahmins in all the other shradhs. Moreover, the rites of inversion seen
during the shradh ceremonies are minimised or absent altogether here.
Chautha

Many Christian communities observe the practice of wake, where relatives

and friends gather in the house of the dead to remember them and join in to
have a meal together. The word ‘wake’ comes from the practice of staying
awake and keeping vigil around the dead before and after burial. This is to
ensure that the ghost of the dead does not return to the land of the living.
Many Hindu communities have similar practices. Known as Chautha in
Hindi-speaking areas and Besnu in Gujarat, this involves gathering to
remember the dead, on the third or fourth day after death. Unlike the
Christian wake, where people dress in black, Hindus wear white. Prayers
and chanting are performed to comfort the living. Flowers are offered to a
photograph or image of the dead. Usually, there is no feeding—that is
reserved for the shradh on the thirteenth day.
 These practices are modern rituals, not referred to in traditional Vedic
scriptures. They coincide with the day the bones and ashes are collected in a
pot after cremation. In Vedic times, this pot was buried but in post-Vedic
times the ash and bones were cast in a river. This is probably when the
extended family (not present at the funeral held within a day of the death)
gathered to mourn.
Memorial services allow friends and relatives to offer condolences to
those immediately affected by the death. Spiritual conversations and
chanting of hymns help cope with loss. Sometimes this is when the will is
read out by lawyers. If the head of the household dies, this is when the heir
is formally announced. The occasion is solemn and contrasted with the
thirteenth day ritual when the feast marks the end of the mourning period.
All death-related rituals are as much for the living as for the dead. Rituals
help the bereaved cope with loss. In the absence of rituals, there is nothing
for the living to do but brood on the horror of mortality and the gut
wrenching emotions of loss. This can lead to pathos and depression. Rituals
hand-hold those living to mull over loss and life and reshape the new
meaning of life that follows.

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 Chapter 3

Memorials for the Dead

In which we learn about why Hindus avoid building tombs, except
viragal, chhatris and samadhis meant for heroes, kings and saints

In the world view of the Garuda Purana, to remember the dead is to prevent
them from moving on to the land of the dead and from there to the next
destination. The rituals are, in fact, designed to urge the ghost to move away
from the land of the living. This is also why only three generations of
ancestors are remembered, and the ones before are believed to exist in the
great beyond with the nameless all-gods. No likenesses are raised in their
honour, no monuments built. The old clothes are discarded so that they can
be forgotten by the dead, leaving them free to seek new clothes or freedom
from clothes.
But all Hindus do not follow the orthodox Vedic way. Times have
changed too, as have social mores even among upper-caste Hindus.
Besides, there are burial sites, dolmens, stupas, samadhis, hero stones,
cenotaphs and sepulchres aplenty across India to remind the living of the
dead. Across India, we find ballads (mahatmya) and genealogies were
composed to remember eminent personalities. In Haridwar, there are
specialists who maintain records of the family tree of pilgrims who visits
these sites. Copper plates and stone inscriptions are kept, maintaining
records of rights over land, water and ritual. So, memory of the ancestors
has not totally been abandoned.

Burials

Before the rise and spread of Vedic culture, most people in the Indian
subcontinent buried their dead. Prehistoric burials had the dead buried
either flat on their back, or crouched in foetal position, directly in the
ground, or in coffins or pots, with funeral material such as jewellery,
mirrors and pots containing food. Sometimes a pair was buried together.
The burial spot was marked by a stone. In agricultural communities, these
markers helped establish property rights.

In Harappa, bodies were buried in the north–south direction, with the

head placed towards the north, the feet facing the south—a practice still
followed in India today when the body is kept in the house, before being
taken to the crematorium. Women were buried with bangles and a mirror. In
Bagpat, Sanauli, Uttar Pradesh, coffins dated to 1800 bce have been found
buried with wagons, probably pulled by oxen. These practices indicate
belief in an afterlife, the idea that one goes to another world after death, a
plane where the deceased will need the material comforts of this world.
These ideas are common beliefs across the world.
 Burial was practiced in Aryan communities found in Central Asia and
Oxus regions. Historians are of the opinion that Vedic culture emerged
when Aryan men married local women who may have introduced
cremation. This verse from the Rig Veda (10.18.11) reminds us that burial
was practised even in Vedic times. ‘Open up and do not crush him, dear
earth. Let it be easy for him to enter and burrow in, dear earth. Wrap him as
a mother wraps a son in the edge of her robe, dear earth.’ But eventually
cremation became the high tradition, for it offered the chance of rebirth.
Many communities in India continue to bury the dead on The bodies are
often placed in a seated position, especially for elders. The body is covered
with salt to prevent noxious odours of rotting flesh from rising. Food,
clothes and water is often placed next to them.
Pot Burials

There are very few burial sites in Harappa when compared to the vastness
of the civilisation’s population. It is believed that many probably cremated
the dead, threw the bodies in rivers or exposed them to the elements. The
practice of collecting bones after cremation and putting them in pots too has
been noted in Harappa. Funeral pots from the period show images of
peacocks, and it is possible that they may have believed that these birds
enabled the journey to the afterlife. We find extensive use of pottery in
burial, a practice that continues even today.
In the Iron Age, burial inside pots was common among tribal
communities across India. Pot burials dating to 1000 bce have been found
in Daimabad and are now being discovered in many parts of Tamil Nadu.
The body was put in a large earthen pot, in a foetal or seated position, given
some rice and cloth, covered with salt and turmeric, and the pot was then
put in a pit and covered with a large stone, with a menhir-shaped rock (also
referred to as ‘pinda’) marking the burial spot.
 Tamil Sangam poetry, dated to 100 ce, captures the memory of a pot
burial. It also speaks of wives accompanying their husbands in death.
‘Maker of the burial pot, like the small white lizard which clings to the cart
and travels long distances, I have travelled with this man, so make the pot
big for the both of us.’

Symbolic Burials

Although Harappan cities appear to have been remarkably organised, with a

standardised layout of roads and houses, even the size of bricks, it is clear
that they were home to diverse communities that followed different funeral
practices. Sometimes bodies were buried, at other times they were
cremated, or their bones were buried in pots, and sometimes, in what may
have been symbolic burial, pots were buried without any bones.
In Dholavira, in the arid lands of Kutch, is an ancient Harappan site,
where the city is built using stones, not fire-baked bricks as in the Indus
Valley cities. What is unique about this site is that it has a vast cemetery of
cenotaphs—burial sites with no dead bodies. Instead, there are stones to
indicate coffins. Were these built to honour traders who never returned from
their mercantile mission? We do not know.

Dolmens

In South India, we find vast fields of menhirs and dolmens belonging to the
Megalithic (big stone) Iron Age, dating to around 1000 bce. Giant stones
were erected to mark the burial site. Sometimes five large flat stones have
been arranged to create a room with a floor and a roof held up by three
walls. The southern wall is usually missing, which has led to the suggestion
that the idea of equating the southern direction with the dead may have been
adopted by Vedic Aryans who married women from such communities. This
is speculation, of course. We have no details of what these practices might
have been. What we are fairly sure of is that rebirth was not a dominant
idea.

We can speculate, however, that the ancients believed that ghosts lingered
in a realm of spirits that co-existed with the realm of the living. Offerings of
food and clothes, lamps and incense were made at these dolmen sites. In
Buddhist literature, we come across tales of monks who ate the food or took
the clothes meant for the dead from burial sites outside the village, angering
spirits who then followed them to their monasteries.
The dead could occasionally be summoned by special ritualists, who
would wear special costumes, prepare their body with fasting, dance and
make music until the spirit entered their body and spoke through them to
the community, resolving issues, expressing concern and communicating
good news. The practice continues today as the Bhutadaivam and Theyyam
practices found in Tulunadu in south Karnataka and north Kerala.

Samadhi

When the Buddha died, his body was cremated. His followers fought over
his bones. These were carried to several places across India and buried
around large mounds (stupa) that became objects of veneration. Thus rose
the belief that the power of a great man outlived his death wherever his
remains were kept. In the Buddhist tradition, we find stupas and pagodas,
where the remains of great teachers (arhat) are placed.
Since Brahmins and Buddhists were rivals, the former pejoratively
referred to the latter as worshippers of bones. However, Hindu monastic
orders (matha) continue the practice of burial mounds in the form of
samadhi shrines for their leaders.
Even though Buddhism waned in India, monastic practices and monastic
orders continued in the region, now led by Hindu leaders, experts in
Vedanta and yoga. Like Buddhist teachers, the heads of matha continue to
be buried in a seated position. It is believed that their body is pure, as they
have mastered yoga and can voluntarily cause their spirit to leave their body
through the practice of samadhi. They would never be reborn, and so there
is no need for the usual Vedic funeral rituals of cremation and feeding.
 The body is buried in seated position in a pit filled with salt. Salt hastens
dehydration, and prevents the smell of rotting flesh from attracting
carnivores. The skull is cracked open with a coconut, to ensure the preta
leaves the body. The burial site is marked by a plant or a tree, usually tulsi
but sometimes the banyan. In many mathas of India, there is a special
compound where one finds clusters of the ‘samadhi’ of old teachers.

Viragal

In the Deccan region, wooden pillars and stones are raised in memory of the
dead, usually ancestors or warriors who died protecting the land and cattle
from wild animals, invaders and thieves. Between the third and the
sixteenth centuries, we find elaborately carved panels across the Konkan,
Karnataka, Andhra and Tamil Nadu that commemorate a hero (vira) who
died a violent death. These ‘hero stones’ or ‘hero steles’ are called ‘viragal’.
 The lowermost panel of the carving depicts the reason for death, the
middle panel shows the deceased’s journey to the celestial realms and the
top panel portrays the deity whose heaven welcomes the hero. Eternity is
indicated by the symbol of the sun and moon. The deity can be Shiva,
Vishnu, Lakshmi or even a Jain Tirthankara. The reason for death is usually
a battle or attack by a wild animal (tiger, boar, leopard).
 Sometimes the hero beheads himself or rips out his own entrails to
express his devotion to a chieftain. The hero could also be a woman who
chooses to burn herself to express her devotion to her husband.
The stones were bathed with water and milk, anointed with sandal paste
and turmeric, and offered fruits and flowers and animal sacrifices, to ensure
the spirit of the dead brought security and prosperity to the community. The
worship of such hero stones was probably a forerunner to the temple culture
that Hinduism embraced about 1,500 years ago.

Sepulcher Shrine

A thousand years ago, when great Chola kings died, their burial or
cremation spots were marked by a Shiva-linga called ‘pallippadai’. The
shrines received royal patronage. The king’s identity was merged with that
of Shiva and the two powers, royal and divine, were invoked through prayer
and ritual to bestow prosperity and security to the land. The sun and moon
symbols were intended to show that the living wanted the memory of the
king to last for eternity.

These shrines were probably popularised by followers of the Kalamukha

and Kapalika schools of Shaivism. This practice of creating shrines to the
dead was later frowned upon because death was seen as inauspicious and
bones were seen as carriers of impurity. With time, the practice was
abandoned, and memories of such shrines were actively erased as Brahmin
orthodoxy introduced the idea of death being a source of impurity and
inauspiciousness.

Chhatri

Nowadays, when a political leader is cremated, a shrine is built to mark the

spot. It is called a ‘samadhi’, but is in fact a ‘chhatri’, or pavilion, a practice
that was popularised by the Rajput kings during the Mughal era. The sites
where Rajput kings died, or were cremated, were often marked by hero
stones. But during the Mughal era, the Rajputs began building grand
pavilions to mark the spot, perhaps imitating the Mughals who were
building elaborate tombs for their fallen warriors and leaders.
 The practice began after the Delhi Sultans adopted the custom of building
mausoleums for their fathers, imitating a Persian tradition. The royal chhatri
was one way to reintroduce Hindu architecture since building temples with
spires (shikhara) was discouraged by the Sultans.
Chhatri—umbrella—has long been associated with royalty in India. A
king is supposed to be the umbrella that shelters his people. Later, the
structures became so elaborate that they resembled temples. The purpose
was to establish the authority of the royal clan, and to connect the current
generation of kings with their great past. It was meant to constantly remind
people how the current power of kings came from past greatness. Here,
memory mattered for political reasons, even if it was in contravention of the
Vedic belief that memory prevents the preta from making its journey to Pitr-
loka.

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 Chapter 4

Women of the Dead

In which we learn how the life and death of the husband determines the
status of Hindu women as sadhava, vidhava, nityasumangali and sati
maharani

The Harappan civilisation is known for its bangles made of shell and bones
and clay. Women here wore bangles more than women in any other known
civilisation. Similar bangles are worn by young married women even today.
It is the symbol of being a sadhava, a married woman whose husband is
alive. When a woman loses her husband, she breaks her bangles and is
declared a widow, a vidhava. In folk superstition, the sight of a sadhava is
said to bring good luck while that of a vidhava is said to bring bad luck.
This division between the married woman and the widow is first
documented in the Rig Veda (10.18.7), ‘Women who are not widows, who
have good husbands, who have no tears in their eyes, no sorrow or sickness,
let them anoint their eyes with cream, and well-adorned step into the
marriage bed. She who lies beside the man whose breath is gone, let her rise
and return to the world of living to the man who desires her and holds her
hand.’ Here, the vidhava who is asked to lie beside her husband’s corpse is
probably raised by the man who grasps her hand in public, remarries her
and restores her status as sadhava.
The Harappan civilisation thrived over 4,000 years ago in and around the
Indus valley. The Vedic civilisation developed some 3,000 years ago in and
around the Gangetic plains. The Vedas speaks of wars between kings. The
epic Mahabharata perhaps retains memories of these battles.
 In the Mahabharata’s Stri Parva, we have images of war widows wailing,
beating their chest, undoing their hair, rolling on the ground and throwing
dust on their faces. The imagery became increasingly tragic and macabre.
The Tamil Sangam culture flourished about 2,000 years ago in the
southern part of India. In Sangam poetry, we hear the earliest wailings of
widows, their misery at the loss of a husband and repeated reference to the
‘unbangled arms’ of the widow and the ‘bangled arms’ of the married
woman. This is probably when sadhava started being seen as auspicious and
the vidhava as inauspicious. It is in Sangam literature that we first find the
idea of a woman’s power being enhanced by her sexuality, her marriage, her
fidelity. In the story of Kannagi, when her husband is wrongly killed by the
king, the angry chaste wife has the power to set the kingdom aflame.

Sadhava

In the Ramayana, when Ram is going to the forest with Sita, he removes his
royal robes and wears those of a hermit. Sita, however, is prevented from
removing her ornaments. In the forest, Arundhati, wife of Vasishtha, gives
her special robes that will never get dirty. A woman whose husband is alive
must always be adorned. Her happiness brings good luck to the family.
When Ravana abducts her, Sita removes all her jewellery and drops it on
the floor, an indicator of the loss of auspiciousness. She sits in Lanka
unhappy and unadorned, and so brings misfortune to that city of gold.
Similar misfortune comes to Hastinapur when Draupadi, the daughter-in-
law of the royal household (kula-vadhu), is dragged by the hair and
disrobed in public.
In sacred Hindu rituals, a woman with a husband and child(ren) is called
‘sumangali’, the lucky one who brings luck wherever she goes. Such
women are seen in this context as priestesses of the household, who turned
the house into a home. They perform vratas, or observances, that involve
fasting and praying to attract fortune to the house, and also adorn their body
and their homes. Rituals like haldi-kumkum, Mangala-Gauri in
Maharashtra, Gangaur in Rajasthan, Teej in the Gangetic plains, and
Sindoor-khela in Bengal are still celebrated, where married women with
children gather to celebrate each other’s auspicious womanhood. Women
are identified with Gauri, the domestic form of Shakti, the wife of Shiva.
The act of beautification, shringara, is extended to the house, which is
decorated with floral strings at the gateway (torana), paintings on the wall
(alpana) and the floor (rangoli, kolam). The bride is considered a diminutive
double of Lakshmi, wife of Vishnu. Her entry into the household, after
marriage, is announced with conch-shell trumpets. To see her face is to
invite good luck. Her footprint and palm print are considered auspicious,
holding the promise of abundance and growth.

Vidhava

In the Ramayana, we learn of Vali’s widow, Tara, marrying his brother,

Sugriva, and Ravana’s widow, Mandodari, marrying his brother,
Vibhishana. This enables the brothers to inherit their elder brother’s throne.
In the Mahabharata, however, the two widows of Vichitravirya are not
allowed to remarry. Instead, a sage is asked to make them pregnant. The
children thus born are considered Vichitravirya’s children.
The wife is described as the field that belongs to the husband; any man
can sow the seed in this field, but the children belong to the husband. Thus,
we see in the Mahabharata the woman being seen as a property of her
husband. The Pandavas are children of Pandu even though their mothers are
made pregnant by the gods. It is an indication of the changing status of
women.
This change was closely connected with property and inheritance. In
patrilineal families, where children and all property belonged to the
husband, remarriage was forbidden to ensure that the property stayed within
the deceased husband’s household. Widows who had no children were then
seen as a liability, an extra mouth to feed. However, in matrilineal clans,
where property passed on to the woman’s children, it did not matter who the
husband was, so women could have many lovers.
The sadhava–vidhava divide was far more common amongst the elite. In
families without wealth and property to inherit, women were free to
remarry. However, in affluent families, there was a dramatic ceremony
dreaded by women that followed the death of a husband— the vermillion
mark on a woman’s forehead and the parting in her hair (sindoor) was
wiped off, her bangles were broken, as was the marriage thread
(mangalsutra), her head was shaved and she was made to wear white
clothes. The ceremony was meant to strip the woman of all status and
pleasure. The situation was worse if the widow had no children.
In medieval times, when women were seen as totally dependent on
fathers and husbands, a vidhava was seen as bringing bad luck and
misfortune. Unadorned and wearing white, she was not to eat salt or spices.
She had to spend her time in isolation, praying to God. She was not allowed
to participate in festivities or fertility rites such as marriage and childbirth.
Sometimes, she was abandoned, forced to fend for herself in the temple
towns of Kashi and Mathura, praying to the gods and depending on alms.
Such was the low status of the widow in traditional Hindu society,
especially in the elite upper strata. It was a world away from that of the Rig
Vedic hymn, where a widow re-enters the world of the living with a new
husband who desires her and holds her hand. Calls to end child marriage
and promote widow remarriage led to the Hindu Reformation of the
nineteenth century, though some saw this as an assault to traditional Indian
values.

Sati Maharani
The widow who burnt herself voluntarily on her husband’s funeral pyre was
venerated as a goddess in many parts of India and was known as ‘Sati
Maharani’. Across India, we find sati stones to commemorate such an
event. These stones are worshipped for good luck.
Stories of Indian women immolating themselves on their husband’s
funeral pyre recur in the writings of the ancient Greeks as well as the
medieval Arabic and European travellers. It was a popular practice among
warrior clans, especially the Rajputs, but was also practised in some royal
families of the Deccan regions. And it became popular amongst Bengali
Brahmin communities in the nineteenth century, leading to the East India
Company passing laws to outlaw sati.

The word ‘sati’ denotes a woman who is totally faithful to her husband, a
quality that is supposed to give her magical powers, attract good luck and
even the ability to withstand the heat of fire. In the Ramayana, being
faithful to Ram gives Sita the power to walk through fire. However, over
time, the word ‘sati’ came to denote the widow who joined her husband in
death, determined to walk together in the land of the dead.
Significantly, this infamous practice has no sanction in any religious
literature, from the Vedas to the Dharma-shastra. But we find it mentioned
in the Mahabharata, when Pandu’s widow Madri kills herself on his pyre, as
do some of the wives of Krishna. The oldest Sanskrit Ramayana, some
2,000 years old, has no reference to sati, but in the regional Telugu version
of the epic, which is 500 years old, Sulochana performs sati holding the
corpse of her husband, Ravana’s son Meghanad.
Mirabai, the Rajput princess who lived five centuries ago, was constantly
harassed by her husband’s family because she refused to immolate herself
on her husband’s funeral pyre and chose instead to worship Krishna in
Vrindavan. The cruel treatment meted out to widows could have been why
the idea of immolating themselves on the funeral pyre seemed like a good
alternative for many Hindu widows. The practice is now banned by law in
the Republic of India.

Nityasumangali

In Tamil epics, we find three kinds of women. There is the nun, attached to
no man, who sought freedom from the wheel of rebirths. There was the
chaste, faithful wife, the Pattini of Tamil lore, the Sati of Sanskrit lore, who
walked with her husband in life and in death over seven lifetimes. Finally,
the courtesan, attached to many men, who enjoyed the eternal pleasures of
paradise.
Courtesans were referred to as ‘nityasumangali’, the eternal bride,
women who never become widows, as they have many husbands. They
never mourned like widows; there was always a husband, a provider, for
them. The courtesans or ganika were considered auspicious, and were thus
invited to wedding, childbirth and housewarming ceremonies. They were
asked to tie the wedding thread of the bride and bless her with luck. The
nityasumangali was linked to luxury, hospitality and pleasure. Her wealth
and skills were passed on from mother to daughter.
In the Atharva Veda, fickle fortune was connected to courtesans as well
as the game of dice, and also to Lakshmi, the whimsical, restless goddess of
fortune and pleasure. The courtesans were earthly counterparts of the
apsaras of Swarga. They provide pleasure to all but belong to none.
 In medieval times, these women were married to temple gods. Since gods
are immortal, these women could never be widows. They could go to any
man, as God is present in all men. Temple inscriptions from the sixth and
the tenth centuries indicate hundreds of women dedicated to temples in
Odisha, Gujarat, Kashmir, Andhra, Goa and Tamil Nadu. They were all
linked to music and dance.
None of these women was shunned in the older Hindu imagination.
However, during colonial rule, courtesans were deemed to be prostitutes,
their vocation was considered impure and illegal and they were wiped out
from society and erased from history.

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 Chapter 5

Caretakers of the Dead

In which we learn about how the caste system and the practice of
untouchability is intimately related to the Hindu idea that death is
inauspicious and impure

Daksha, the Brahmin patriarch, shunned the crematorium. There wandered

Shiva, in the company of dogs and ghosts. Daksha’s daughter chose Shiva
as her husband much to Daksha’s irritation. Daksha refused to invite Shiva
to yagna and offer him food. An enraged Sati killed herself by jumping in
her father’s fire altar. Daksha remained indifferent. In fury, Shiva attacked
the yagna-shala and beheaded Daksha. The Devas, who needed the yagna to
feed themselves, begged Shiva to restore the yagna. Shiva gave Daksha a
goat’s head, who has since ensured that all leftovers (ucchista) would
belong to Shiva and his people. From that day, Shiva and Shakti became
part of both Vedic and Tantric worship. In the left-hand path, Shiva and
Shakti take the form of the fierce Bhairava and Bhairavi, while in right-
hand path they take the form of the gentle Shankara and Gauri. This story
explains the two paths of Hinduism: the purity-conscious right-hand path
(dakshina marga, or Veda), and the impurity-embracing left-hand path
(vama marga, or Tantra).
Impurity was a source of knowledge and power for the Aghori, but it
rendered the Chandala inauspicious. Chandala was the one whose
hereditary occupation it was to clear the village of dead bodies and tend to
funeral pyres. The exclusion of the Chandala from the village on grounds of
purity, referred to in late Vedic scriptures, is one of the earliest examples of
the practice of untouchability.

Chandala

In the Puranas, Swarga is located above the sky and Naraka below the earth.
Swarga is full of pleasures, and Naraka full of pain. Swarga is for those who
fed the gods when alive, Naraka for those who fed no one when alive.
Swarga is for the Devas, who do not fear death. Naraka is for the preta, who
yearn to be reborn. Swarga is full of purity, joy and auspiciousness. Naraka
is full of impurity, sorrow and inauspiciousness.
This cosmic architecture manifests in the ideal of the Hindu settlement.
In the centre is the temple, attracting all things beautiful and good
(mangala), managed by Vedic priests who follow strict rules of purity. In the
periphery of the village is the crematorium, impure and inauspicious
(amangala), where live those who dispose of the corpses, the Chandala.
It is theorised that this superimposition of the cosmic architecture on the
village played a key role in the rise of the caste system, with ‘higher pure’
communities located centrally around the temple and ‘lower impure’
communities marginalised socially, physically and psychologically. Entry
into caste was determined by birth and escape by death.
 Late Vedic texts, such as the Chandogya Upanishad, over 2,500 years
old, mention the Chandala. We also learn of his life from the writings of
Chinese monks who came to India to study Buddhism 1,500 years ago. The
Chandala lived in the crematorium and tended to funeral pyres. He ate
whatever was offered to the dead, and wore clothes gifted to the dead.
Skulls and bones became his utensils and tools. The dogs that roamed the
crematorium were his companions. His presence was considered
inauspicious, his shadow was shunned.
The association of death with impurity is why the crematorium is always
located outside the village. Those who enter the crematorium become
temporarily impure, and must bathe when they return home. Brahmins who
perform funeral rituals, and receive gifts as stand-ins for the dead, are
considered to be of lower status too. Those whose family vocation it was to
tend to the funeral pyres, and so had to live around the crematorium, were
considered the most impure of communities, shunned by the village.
Over centuries, as notions of purity were elaborated, the Chandalas were
placed lower and lower in the expanding and evolving caste hierarchy. It
fell to them to clear the village of dead bodies of those without families as
well as the dead bodies of animals. As the Chandala was seen as a source of
pollution, the only fire he was allowed access to was the funeral fire. The
only water he was allowed access to was the water used in funeral rituals. In
its extreme form, the caretakers of the dead had to carry a pot around their
neck so that their spit never touched the village ground. They had to carry a
broom to wipe out their footprints. They had to wear bells so that their
approach could be heard from a distance, giving people a chance to avoid
their sight and shadow.
The Chandala is associated with Shiva in many stories. Shiva too
wanders the crematorium, adorns himself with skulls and bones, smears his
body with ash and is connected to the dogs of the cremation ground in his
Bhairava form. There are stories where Shiva comes in the form of a
Chandala and offers Amrita to sages in a cup fashioned from a skull. The
sages shun the Chandala’s shadow, refuse the drink and thus lose a chance
at immortality. In Tantric circles, stories such as these make the Chandala
an object of veneration due to his association with death, looking at the
wisdom that a familiarity with death would grant him.
The Bhairava form of Shiva is linked to Brahmin-killing or Brahmahatya
because Shiva beheads Brahma as well as Daksha. Brahma chases after his
daughter, a metaphor for attachment. Daksha controls his daughter, a
metaphor for insecurity. By beheading them, Shiva introduces the idea of
tapa, the fire of restraint that burns cravings. Shiva is called ‘Kapalika’ as
he carries the Brahma’s skull everywhere. He teaches the doctrine of atma,
reminding all creatures to look beyond pure and impure vocations, and
recognise the soul in all bodies. His consort, Chamunda, also known as
Bhairavi, sits on corpses, bedecks herself with the heads and limbs of the
dead, eats flesh and rides on ghosts. This puts the Bhairava and the Bhairavi
in direct conflict with the purity-seeking Brahmin. They are equated with
the ucchista in Vedic lore. A leftover from the pre-Vedic ways when death
was venerated not feared, when the crematorium was where you went to
learn. It was an idea that inspired the folk tales of a king called
Vikramaditya who tries to catch a ghost, a vetala, that resided in a
crematorium.
In the Puranic story of Raja Harishchandra, the king becomes so poor
that, to pay ritual fees to Rishi Vishwamitra, he has to sell himself and his
wife. His wife becomes slave to a Brahmin family, where she is constantly
abused. He becomes slave to a Chandala, where he is treated with respect.
Yet, his fate is considered worse than hers. He accepts his fate stoically,
earning the respect of the gods, who elevate him to the status of Indra, king
of Swarga. The Chandala and the cremation ground are thus deeply
intertwined with the secret knowledge and occult ideas of Tantra.
These stories, however, did not elevate the status of the Chandala or
loosen the stranglehold of Brahminical notions of purity. The Chandala
remained the outsider, and contact with him was always considered
transgressive by ‘upper’ castes.

Aghori

Vedic culture was initially confined to the upper Gangetic plains. In the rest
of the subcontinent, tribes and other local communities buried their dead
and did not believe in rebirth. Stones were raised to mark the spot of burial.
Kings and warriors who died in conflict defending the community were
venerated as heroes. Musicians played drums and sang songs of their glory.
Shamans donned masks and make-up and bright clothes to invoke the
spirits of the ancestors and invite the pitr to occupy their body temporarily
and speak to the living, guide them and resolve disputes. To make their
body worthy, the shamans would fast, denying it the pleasure of sleep and
food. These practices are found today in south Karnataka and north Kerala
in the form of Bhuta-kolam (dance of Bhuta-daivam) and Theyyam rituals,
performed by members at the lower rung of the caste hierarchy, rendered
divine during the period of the ritual, which invariably takes place at night.
In these communities, the spirits of the ancestors were the earliest gods
known to the common folk. They lived amongst the living—feared,
respected, venerated. This was the Bhuta-loka, or the invisible realm of the
ghosts, ever-present and readily accessible to special performer priests. It
was the realm of Bhairava and Bhairavi.
Buddhist lore is full of yaksha spirits in the crematorium who trouble
monks who eat food offered to them. These bhutas were sometimes offered
food in Buddhist monasteries. These stories indicate beliefs and practices
before the popularity of Vedic rituals. Across India today there are shaman-
like priests who can talk to spirits and communicate the will of ancestors.
There are even those who still wander in crematoriums, looking for the
corpses of the dead, seeking wisdom from ghosts. They are called Aghori,
the ones who must not be feared. Perhaps they owe their origin to pre-Vedic
or extra-Vedic customs and beliefs.
Vedic priests considered these practices inauspicious and impure, and
encouraged people to perform antyeshti and shradh so that the spirit of the
dead could travel across Vaitarni to await rebirth, and thus another chance at
liberation from rebirth. The body had to be cremated so that its bones and
skull could not be used by Aghoris in secret occult rituals involving corpses
(shava-sadhana). The crematorium (where the dead are burnt or cast into
rivers), the cemetery (where the dead are buried) and the charnel ground
(where bodies are exposed to air) were in the Vedic imagination a place
haunted by dark, mysterious, dangerous and negative forces. They even
shunned the Chandala, connecting with him only during the time of death.
 The Vedic world valued the mantra, from the word ‘manas’, or mind. In
the early Vedic world, ‘manas’ was one of the many words used for spirit,
the others being jiva, atma, asu and prana. The Tantric world valued tanu,
the body. While the Vedic world sought to help the preta make the journey
to the world of the ancestors, the Tantric world figured out ways by which
the atma could leave the flesh voluntarily: a practice called ‘samadhi’ in
yoga. The atma could then travel to the world of spirits and gods and return
to the body at will. These practices are referred to in early yoga texts. The
Tantrics also figured out how an individual yogi’s jiva-atma could merge
with the cosmic param-atma; this formed the basis of Hindu mysticism.
They figured out how the jiva-atma could be energised by the kundalini, the
untapped force of the flesh, so that an individual can bloom and acquire
supernatural powers, siddha, such as flying in air, walking on water,
changing shape and size, manipulating space and time. This was Hindu
occult. The experts of the occult were called Nath in North India and Siddha
in South India.
 The word ‘shaman’ is sometimes traced to the Shramana, Buddhist and
Jain monks who chose meditation and breathing practices over Vedic fire
rituals. Often, these monks lived outside the village, in the forest, atop
mountains, and engaged with those who lived in the crematorium. They had
no problem eating food or wearing clothes that had been given to the
ancestors. They engaged with the dead, and with caretakers of the dead.
This played a key role in the growth of the Tantric schools of Buddhism,
Jainism and Hinduism.
Tantric gurus of Vajrayana Buddhism, such as Padmasambhava, and
many of the eighty-four Siddha are shown holding skulls and bones, and
residing in charnel grounds surrounded by rotting corpses. Only the brave
approached them. The Adi Guru, or primal teacher of the Nath, known as
Datta, is depicted with dogs and a cow alongside him, balancing the Tantric
and the Vedic ways, living on the edge of the village under a banyan tree.
The attempt to make Tantra a part of the mainstream was led by Adi
Shankara, who in the seventh century popularised Vedic culture across
tribes and communities. He was born in a Brahmin family. His father died
young, and he was brought up by a mother who nurtured his independent
spirit. He saw the limitations of Brahmin rituals of exclusion and the value
of the Buddhist practices of inclusion. Adi Shankara decided that there was
more value in connecting communities than disconnecting them. He saw the
overlaps between the Buddhist idea of shunya (nothingness) and the Hindu
idea of nirguna (formless divine). In Shiva’s endless pillar of fire (jyotir-
linga), he identified the form of the formless divine.
Against the wishes of his mother, he became a sanyasi. However,
breaking the code of Vedic samskara, Adi Shankara returned to perform his
mother’s funeral rites. In other words, though a hermit who technically has
no family, he performed his duty as a son. This was transgressive. He
clearly saw greater value in formless meaning than in language, in the idea
more than the ritual, the soul more than the flesh.
Adi Shankara came from Kerala, where the old secret rituals of
summoning ancestral spirits into the bodies of the living continues. He
engaged with a Chandala man, as we know from one of his encounters in
Kashi. Adi Shankara asked a Chandala to move away from his path. The
Chandala said, ‘You want me to move or my soul to move? But did you not
say the soul is everywhere? So how can it be moved? And if everything is
the soul, why do you ask me to move?’ These words so impressed the
scholar that he was convinced the Chandala was Shiva in disguise.
From Adi Shankara’s biography, composed nearly five centuries after his
time, we learn about his knowledge of parakaya pravesh, the occult practice
of leaving one’s body and experiencing life through another man’s body. He
valued the hermit’s life over the householder’s, which led to some people
accusing him of wrapping Buddhist concepts in Hindu clothing. A woman
called Ubhaya Bharati asked him about his knowledge of Tantra and Kama-
shastra—knowledge of the body and experience of sex and other sensual
pursuits. How would a hermit who had taken a vow of celibacy and
restraint experience this knowledge? Adi Shankara is then said to have
practised an occult ritual. He went into the yogic state of samadhi that
allows the yogi to voluntarily separate the atma from the sharira, the soul
from the body, and slip out like a sword leaving a scabbard. He then entered
the dead body of a king called Amaru. The king’s corpse got reanimated,
and through Amaru’s body, in his pleasure palace, Adi Shankara
experienced all kinds of physical pleasures. This led him to compose Amaru
Shataka, a Sanskrit work on sensual delights.

Tantric practice enabled Adi Shankara to maintain the purity of his flesh,
yet experience what the Vedic world deemed impure. He is venerated by
both Vedantins as well as Tantrics. His access to Tantra helped him
voluntarily nudge his jiva-atma out of his body, and his knowledge of
Vedanta helped him appreciate that the jiva-atma is no different from the
param-atma, the cosmic soul. Adi Shankara is, therefore, a great teacher of
mysticism as well as of occult, samadhi as well as siddhi. Mysticism unites
the jiva-atma to the param-atma. Occult gets the jiva-atma energised by the
kundalini so that it is no longer limited by the flesh and has access to
supernatural powers. Together, there was more to learn about life. Inclusion
was the key, not exclusion.

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 Chapter 6

Fear of the Dead

In which we learn about bhuta, preta, pishacha, vetala and other
ghosts described in the occult traditions of India

There’s a popular trope in Hollywood films, of soulless zombies who walk

around eating the living, infecting them. And there are the vampires,
immortal but not alive, undead and craving human blood. In other movies,
we’ve met demons from hell who rise up to torment the living, and ghosts
who were not buried in holy ground and so wander in the woods, haunting
homes and possessing humans. The exorcist is called upon to drive them
out of our earth to purgatory and back to hell. They fear Christian religious
symbols and verses from the Bible because they are based on the Christian
mythological universe, and also based on the concept of only one life.
In the Indian cultural context, these ideas make no sense, for Indian
ghosts belong to a different mythological universe—one based on rebirth,
where there is no concept of evil (something outside God), where the
charnel ground (smashan-bhoomi) of cremation and burial is a place of
wisdom too. Many Tantric practices take place in the crematorium and
involve dead bodies and the spirits of the dead. According to the Garuda
Purana, unless a Brahmin performs the antyeshti and shradh ceremonies,
the preta will not be able to cross the Vaitarni and become a pitr. He will
remain trapped in the world of living, and that is not good. As bhutas, they
torment the living. As pishachas, they torment the dead. As vetala, they are
tormented by sorcerers.
The ghosts of Hinduism are lost and trapped, not evil. While there are
rituals to drive away ghosts, they acknowledge the hunger and attachment
of these tragic souls. The point of Hindu exorcism is to facilitate movement.
This may involve mock rage, threats, compassionate cajoling, even bribes,
with promises to resolve every issue that prevents the dead from moving on.
Hanuman, who went to Patala and rescued Ram and Lakshman from
demons, is often invoked for protection, as all ghosts fear Hanuman and see
him as an aspect of Shiva-Bhairava.

Preta

After death, and funeral rituals, the spirit of the dead, that is, the preta, lives
in the crematorium for a few days before it can make its journey across the
Vaitarni to Yama-loka. During this period, it is lost and frightened and so
compassionate relatives comfort it with a lamp, some water and even
germinating seeds. The Garuda Purana states that those who died while
travelling, away from home, in accidents, or during epidemics and famine
also wait in crematoriums hoping that their family members remember
them and perform the requisite rituals. Until this is done, they cannot go to
the land of the dead. Trapped on the wrong side, they torment the living,
haunting them and possessing them, until rituals are performed to get them
to go. In Kashi, there are songs where it is said that Shiva plays Holi every
day in the cremation ground with ash instead of colour with resident ghosts.
Most ghosts are temporary residents and eventually make their way to
Yama’s realm. But some stay back and create trouble for the living.
The preta are typically imagined as hiding amongst the aerial roots of the
banyan tree. They hang upside down like bats on the tree, as the pitr do in
Yama-loka. The banyan tree is, therefore, not a householder’s plant; only
hermits seek its shade. Shiva is often shown as seated under a banyan tree,
teaching hermits the secret of atma. Vishnu takes the form of a baby and
floats on a banyan leaf that is being cradled and tossed by the waters of
doom and death (pralaya). Both Shiva and Vishnu comfort the preta, urging
them to not lose hope.
We gather from local lore that ghosts are of two types: those eager to
cross to the other side, and those who are not. The reluctant ghosts include
those who are still attached to the land of the living, clinging to family and
fortune or to emotions such as rage, jealousy, vengeance and injustice.
The funeral rituals prescribed in the Garuda Purana are meant to calm
them down, just as food calms those who are hungry and angry. Public
ceremonies are encouraged for the dead so that even strangers, the nameless
forgotten dead, beggars, orphans and widows, those whose rituals have not
been performed, may find peace. All is well only after the preta reaches the
land of the dead and becomes a pitr.
 There is a fascinating story from the Sanskrit collection of tales known as
Kathasaritsagar that speaks of the anxiety of the preta even after becoming
pitr. A king was conducting his annual pinda-daan when three hands rose
from the earth to receive the offerings. One belonged to a Brahmin, one to a
Kshatriya and one to a Vaishya. The man who married the king’s mother
was a Vaishya, but the man who made her pregnant was a Brahmin, and the
man who raised him was a Kshatriya. So, who was the real father? Who
should get the offering? The answer to this question depends on various
legal and social criteria. But the king decided that all the dead, whether
related or not, should receive offerings. That generosity is the hallmark of a
great king.
Bhuta

The word ‘bhuta’ has many meanings. Bhuta denotes the elements: air, fire,
water, earth and ether. The ‘past’ is another meaning of the word. It means
‘ghost’ too. Bhuta refers to ghosts who cling to the past because no
ceremony has been performed to help them travel to the future. They are
trapped in the land of the living without a body. So, they haunt the living,
taking refuge in lonely spots and abandoned homes.
In many communities, the bhuta is summoned through ritual to bless the
living, reveal the future and resolve disputes. The summoning is done by
specially trained shamans who sing, dance and make music. They prepare
their body with paints and masks to serve as a vessel for the spirit. In
Kerala, these ritual performances are called Theyyam (Daivam, ‘god’ in
Sanskrit) which refers to gods.
 In Tulu Nadu, south Karnataka, this ritual performance is called Bhuta-
kolam. The spirits thus summoned could be of great men and women, who
were powerful leaders, and fought wild animals and invaders. Their power
is invoked to serve the living. The bhuta is not feared here; he is revered. In
many farms of Kerala and Tulu Nadu, special shrines are built in their
honour. They are given their favourite food, which includes meat and toddy.
The most common meaning of bhuta remains a ghost who troubles the
living. A ghost for whom funeral rites have not been performed makes his
unhappiness felt in many ways: accidents, diseases, misfortune,
miscarriages, diseased cattle, rotting of food, foul smell, nightmares,
moving objects, hallucinations, hysteria. When buildings and bridges keep
falling people fear the presence of unhappy spirits. So rituals are performed
to feed and calm and reassure the dead.
But there are ghosts who do not want to cross the Vaitarni. They are still
attached to the life lived and seek revenge or justice. They long for the life
they had or lost. This is moha or attachment. With no sense of time, they
stick around on earth long after their loved ones are dead.

Pishacha

If Devas fear Asuras, if rishis fear rakshasas, then the preta and the pitr fear
the pishacha. The preta becomes a pitr because he has family. But when a
preta has no family to help it turn into a pitr, it becomes a pishacha, a
tormentor of the dead. It also torments the living—frightening people,
driving people mad, polluting water and fire, spoiling food, filling the house
with foul odours, causing the body to break into boils and rashes, twisting
tongues so that people say foul and mean things, destroying relationships,
causing miscarriages and accidents, causing sheep and goats and cattle to
get lost, causing mosquitoes and fleas to spread disease.
 However, there are special rituals to help the pishacha calm down and
enable its journey to pitr-loka. Sternly but compassionately, it needs to be
told to let go and move on.
The earliest reference to ghosts who torment the dead is in the Rig Veda,
in the Hymn of Yama, where they are told, ‘Go away, get away, crawl away
from here. The ancestors have prepared a place for our dead. Yama provides
food and resting places for him already.’

Vetala
As per tales first narrated around eighth century ce in Central India, King
Vikramaditya was sent by a sorcerer to fetch a vetala from the crematorium
for a sorcerer. As long as the king is silent, he can carry the vetala. If he
speaks, the vetala will go back to its tree. The vetala does not want to be
caught, and so poses puzzles and demands that Vikramaditya solve them to
prove that he is indeed the great Vikramaditya and not an imposter, thus
teasing the king’s royal ego. He also warns the king that his head will split
if he knows the answer and refuses to answer.
Vikramaditya succumbs twenty-four times. The twenty-fifth time,
Vikramaditya is relieved, for he does not know the answer and stays silent.
The vetala laughs and says that the ignorance of the king will cost him
dearly. The sorcerer will use the vetala in a Tantric ritual to gain powers that
will help him overthrow Vikramaditya himself.
 This collection of folk tales known as the Vetala-pachisi or twenty-five
tales of the vetala is an indication of how important sorcery was in royal
courts of early medieval India, and also of the relationship of sorcery with
the dead. Vetala is a ghost that is unable to cross the Vaitarni. Unable to
become a pitr, it remains a preta that seeks a body. This is why it occupies
corpses, animating them partially, speaking through them, but unable to
restore the body to life. The vetala was believed to be the source of great
power and wisdom, living as he did in the world of spirits, with access to
forbidden knowledge that is unavailable to the living and the dead.
Later in the story, the vetala helps Vikramaditya defeat the sorcerer and
becomes his guide. In some versions, the question that Vikramaditya cannot
answer is: ‘How will you die?’ No human knows how they will die, but the
vetala, who lives on the border of the land of the living and the land of the
dead, can peek into the account books of Chitragupta and reveal their
secrets. The vetala is a powerful ally and helps Vikramaditya become a
great king. But it too is unable to prevent Vikramaditya’s death at the hands
of the young potter Shalivahan.

The tale of Vikramaditya’s vetala spread to other lands through India’s

vast trading routes. In Arabia, we learn of a king who is as wise as
Vikramaditya, called Suleiman (Solomon), and who has power of djinns,
supernatural beings of Arab mythology. Few stories are better known the
world over than Aladdin and the genie in the magic lamp. The word genie
comes from djinn, and both ideas are believed to have been inspired by the
story of vetala—or conversely, the vetala traces its origins to the djinn. In
Persian folklore, God forced the djinn to work for Suleiman because they
had become arrogant. The djinn could hear the conversations of the angels
and so could predict death. But God decreed they would not predict the
death of Suleiman. Suleiman died while seated on the throne while
supervising the work of the djinn. Even after he had died, the djinn kept
working until termites ate the royal staff of Suleiman and his corpse rolled
down his magnificent throne.
In many parts of India, such as the Konkan, we find temples dedicated to
vetala. They are described as part of Shiva’s entourage that accompanied
him when he was getting married to the Goddess. They serve as guardians
of villages. In Goa, we hear of vetala who walk at night around the village
and so are given footwear in gratitude. Vetala typically do not wear clothes
and are considered male. They may be remnants of pre-Vedic customs and
beliefs.

Brahma-rakshasa

In Indian folklore, a Brahmin who misuses his high position in society can
be reduced to a terrifying ghost called Brahma-rakshasa, who is not allowed
to cross the Vaitarni unless he makes amends for his misconduct. He has
great power but is also a sulky and irritable ghost, yearning for liberation.
Bitter and caustic, burdened by his arrogance, he is sometimes worshipped
as a deity, one who creates trouble unless acknowledged and fed. This idea
of worshipping a troubling spirit is found in Southeast Asia too, where
offerings are made to such spirits trapped on the wrong side of the Vaitarni.
 The Brahma-rakshasa has to learn detachment. He has to let go of his
greed, anger, jealousy and frustration. He has to give away everything he
has. He also has to stop seeking food from others. He has to learn to eat his
own body. This will transform him into Kirtimukha, the head of glory, the
head of the being who consumes the self rather than the other. The image of
a severed head was often seen at the entrance of or atop the roof of temples.
Images of giant severed heads are also seen on the top of temples in
Cambodia and Indonesia. This is the head of the Brahma-rakshasa if he still
seeks food, and the Kirti-mukha if he has outgrown the need for food. In
old Tantric temples of Odisha, the severed head symbol is called Vajra-
munda, or the diamond head, a reminder of the occult belief that the head is
the seat of great wisdom and power. The lolling tongue reminds of his
hunger. It mocks our own hunger, encouraging us to outgrow it or end up
trapped like a ghost.
These stories underline the importance of Hindu funeral ceremonies and
contribute to their widespread popularity across India. They ensured that
Brahmins had a role to play in all funeral ceremonies and received gifts as
well as fees for services rendered. Stories continuously remind people of
the fate of the dead if they are not fed by the living. Their uncremated
bodies, their buried skulls and bones will be used in Tantric rituals. Their
spirits will be captured and enslaved by sorcerers. So, everyone is
encouraged to perform the Vedic ritual of antyeshti, where the body is
burnt, the skull is cracked and the bones cast into rivers.
Fear of the dead and the stories they inspire capture the anxieties of the
living about the mysterious hereafter.

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 Chapter 7

History of Death
In which we comprehend how the Hindu understanding of death has
transformed over time, from prehistoric dolmens and Harappan burials
to abbreviated funeral rituals in electric crematoriums

Contemporary Hindu beliefs and practices can be traced to prehistoric

times, Harappa (2500 bce), Vedic Samhitas (1200 bce), Brahmana (800
bce), Srauta-sutra, Grihya-sutra and the Upanishads (500 bce), the epics
Ramayana and the Mahabharata, the Dharmashastra (300 bce to 300 ce), the
Puranas (post fifth century ce), the Tantras (post tenth century ce) and
Bhakti literature (post fifteenth century ce). They even show the influence
of Christianity, Islam and modern reform movements.

Prehistoric Times

The shift from animal to human began when humans reflected on death and
afterlife and created rituals for the dead. In most Stone Age cultures, we
find burial rituals. The dead are sometimes adorned. Their graves are filled
with food, clothes, jewellery, weapons and other goods they may need in a
future life. Some cremated their dead. Others exposed the body on rocks for
birds to eat. Some dunked the body in flowing water. Still others chopped it
into pieces which they then cast in rivers, a practice still followed by certain
tribes in Northeast India.
Across India, burial sites and pot burial sites have been found in the
Stone Age and Iron Age communities, with menhirs and dolmens raised to
honour the dead. Cremation may have been practised too but one would not
know, since cremation leaves no record, unless bones and ashes are
collected and buried in pots.

Harappan Period
As per archaeologists, the ancient Harappans who built fabulously
organised cities around the Indus over 4,000 years ago were the first to
grow sesame (til) and crush it to make oil (tel). This was exported to the
Middle East. Even today, Hindus offer black sesame seeds to ancestors
during Pitr-paksha, the fortnight of the ancestors, while white sesame seeds
are offered to the gods (Devas) during festivals like Makara Sankranti,
marking the arrival of spring. Sesame oil is lit in ceremonies involving the
ancestors, while ghee is lit in ceremonies involving the gods. Through
sesame, Hindu culture remains connected to a civilisation that existed over
4,000 years ago.
Harappans used pots in funeral rites. Even today, Hindus use pots in
funeral rites to carry the fire that lights the pyre and to carry the water that
is poured around the corpse. The pot containing water is symbolically
cracked three times to mark the shattering of the body and the release of the
spirit.

Vedic Samhita

The horse was domesticated in 2000 bce, north of the Black Sea. By 1500
bce, horse-drawn chariots had reached every corner of the known world—
Greece, Turkey, Israel, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, China and India. The
Eurasian nomads who brought them to India via Central Asia buried the
dead with horses and chariots in Central Asia. However, by the time they
had reached the Punjab-Haryana region, around 1500 bce, and the Rig
Veda, after marrying local women, we find hymns that speak of cremation
and the journey of ancestors.
In the Atharva Samhita, the last collection of Vedic hymns, we find words
for the embodied soul (atma) and the cosmic soul (brahman), and the
earliest mention of the metaphor that is repeatedly used in later literature for
the human body: ‘the lotus flower with nine doors’. The Atharva Veda
states that the body results from the contribution of asu by the father and
garbha by the mother. These ideas contribute to the incremental Hindu
understanding of the body and its origins as elaborated in the Vedanta and
Tantra that came much later. The Atharva Veda clearly refers to offering of
grain, sesame, milk, ghee and even meat to the deceased and shows
veneration for three generations of ancestors. While the Rig Veda focused
on bidding farewell to the dead, the Atharva Veda refers to veneration of the
dead.
In Rig Samhita, the earliest collection of Vedic hymns, there are hymns
that ask fire to gently burn the dead, of ancestors who go on a journey, fear
of ghosts who torment the dead and aspiration for a bright imperishable
heaven. The word ‘svadha’ used in rituals related to ancestors is first found
here. We also find words that speculate on breath (prana), life (jiva),
consciousness (manas) and force (asu). The Rig Veda introduces Yama as
the god of the dead, and his four-eyed dogs. There is reference to animals
being sacrificed and burnt along with the deceased. The animal thus offered
was called anustarani.
In the Rig Veda, there is also reference to the earth who is asked to
embrace and comfort the dead like a mother and a sister. There is reference
to the idea of returning to nature itself. The breath becomes the wind, the
mind becomes the moon, the eyes become the sun. There is talk of
regeneration and a new life. The Rig Veda introduces the concepts of
Swarga and Naraka, but these are not connected to karma, punishment or
rebirth. In all this we see a diversity of beliefs and customs: burials,
cremations, collection of bones in urns that are scattered back in nature and
a return to a new life in a new body.
 Today, during the pinda-daan, tarpan is poured over the pinda, which
represents both the flesh and the food of ancestors. The tarpan is water
mixed with black sesame, barley and kusha grass. Pinda is made from rice,
barley and sesame. Harappan cities used to grow sesame and wheat. Rice
came much later, probably from the east. The Rig Veda speaks of barley and
kusha grass. This indicates that the funeral rituals today are an
amalgamation of many ideas: the pre-Vedic sesame, the Vedic barley and
kusha, and the post-Vedic rice.
The mixing of ideas indicates a mixing of cultures. Among the women
that the Aryas married, some may have descended from the ancient
mercantile cities of the Harappan civilisation, and others from the eastern
regions where the dead were buried under mounds. That is why the last
verse of the Rig Veda invites all to collaborate.

Brahmana, Srauta-sutra and Grihya-sutra

Early Vedic tradition venerated the collective of ancestors in monthly and

annual rites. In later Vedic tradition, the post-funeral shradh rituals of
turning the preta into pitr emerged. This developed after 1000 bce, in the
Gangetic plains, and is documented in the Brahmanas. Brahmana literature
was composed to elaborately explain the method and logic of various
rituals. These were an extension of the Yajur Samhita. Later, public and
private ceremonies emerged that were documented in the Srauta-sutra and
Grihya-sutra.
The Brahmana literature contains elaborate rituals to recreate the cosmos
as the body of the Purusha Prajapati. The cosmos, it says, has sixteen parts,
as does the human body. Perhaps, it is from this idea that the ritual of
placing sixteen pindas during shradh comes from. Brahmana rituals reveal
an obsession with regeneration, renewal and rebirth, and great anxiety
related to degeneration, decay and death. They also speak of how all living
beings are bound by debts to gods, sages, ancestors, their family and
strangers. To repay this debt, humans must perform yagna and the rituals of
feeding.
Feeding organisms was ritually done by lighting at least three fires: one
for the household, the eastern fire for the gods and the southern fire for
ancestors. In Brahmana literature, we find the more elaborate pinda-daan
concept—mashed rice or barley balls, mixed with black sesame—being
used to represent both the body of the dead and their food. The ancestors
are fed along with Agni and Soma during the pinda-pitr-yagna on new
moon days and during the rainy season ceremonies.

Significantly, Grihya-sutra refers to the collection of bones and ashes

after cremation, which are then buried under the ground. This ritual was
called pitr-medha. The practice of asthi-visarjan emerged in a later period.
We also find here the tension between the meat-loving priests and the
priests who were choosing vegetarian food. The old practice of offering
meat of animals to the deceased was being replaced by offering only rice
and barley. The Shatapatha Brahmana tells a story to explain the transition.
At first, humans were the preferred offering during yagna but their sap
entered horses, then bulls, then sheep, then goat and finally earth, from
which emerged rice, which was now suitable as food for the gods and
ancestors.

Upanishads
By 500 bce, the Upanishads were being composed. This was after the rise
of urban centres in the Gangetic plains, connected by busy trade routes, the
use of metal coins (karshapana) as currency by merchants and new ideas
such as balance sheet, rebirth and liberation. The Upanishads introduce the
idea of the trap of rebirths and the joy of liberation.
In the Katha Upanishad, Yama himself explains to Nachiketa what
happens after death: ‘If you are enchanted and entrapped by sensory
experiences, you will stay trapped in the material world of rebirths. If you
can break free from these sensory experiences, you will break free and not
be reborn again. Rebirth will trap you in the world of alternating pleasures
and pains. Liberation will grant you eternal tranquillity.’ To indulge sensory
experience is bhoga. The restraining of sensory experiences is yoga. The
fire of desire is called kama. The fire that burns kama is called tapa. Here
there is no talk of pinda or shradh.
 In the Upanishads, the idea of moksha is elaborated as the union of the
individual soul with the cosmic soul. This union (yoga) is different from the
conceptions of dissolution (nirvana) or isolation (kaivalya) presented by
Buddhist and Jain monks at the same time. The monastic orders favoured
withdrawal from society, while the Hindu world valued greater engagement
with society.

Dharma-shastra

Megasthenes, the Greek ambassador to the Mauryan court spoke of the

involvement of Brahmins in the rites of Hades, the Greek counterpart of
Yama. He was perhaps referring to the practice of shradh. Texts known as
the Dharma-shastra began appearing at this time, from 300 bce to 300 ce.
These works appear to consciously counter Buddhist and Jain precepts of
monastic practices that lead to liberation. They value the householder’s life
instead and advise renunciation only after household obligations have been
fulfilled.
Dharma-shastra along with Shrauta-sutra and Grihya-sutra are part of
Kalpa-sutra, the corpus of Vedic ceremonies, which is considered a
Vedanga, or limb of the Veda. Vedanga, which values ritual and social
engagement, was compiled alongside Vedanta, which is more speculative.
By this time, the idea of samsara and samskara were firmly established.
Samsara is the realm of karma, applicable to all living organisms who eat
and are eaten. Samskara is the realm of dharma, the rituals and cultural
practices, and rites of passage that distinguish humans from animals and
plants. It is based not on eating and being eaten but on feeding and being
fed. The Dharma-shastra further explore the idea introduced in Brahmana
literature that all humans are obliged to repay debts to gods, sages,
ancestors and humans by performing yagna. Great value is placed on the
shradh rituals.
The Dharma-shastra introduces the idea of feeding Brahmins during the
shradh. They are said to represent the ancestors and so must receive all that
the relatives want to give the dead, including gifts of grain, gold, clothes,
even mattresses and slippers. These texts also lay down lists of people who
should and should not be invited. Temple priests are not to be invited,
indicating that, at this period, there were tensions between Brahmins who
followed the Vedic rituals and those who embraced the worship of images
in temples that was popular with the masses. These temple priests are
clubbed with doctors and moneylenders who are not invited to eat at the
shradh. In later times, this would change, with Brahmins who performed
funeral rituals being seen as lower in the purity hierarchy as compared to
temple priests. Remarkably, Dharma-shastra literature does not talk of
pilgrimages, and so the idea of tirtha-shradh probably emerged only in
Puranic times as Hindu practices spread to areas beyond the Gangetic
plains.
The food offered to the dead in the Dharma-shastra is not just rice (as is
the practice now) and barley (as in Vedic times) but also the meat of various
animals. No one talks about this any longer, because since the nineteenth
century there has been a concerted effort to equate Hinduism with
vegetarianism. Across the Dharma-shastra texts—whether written by
Apasthamba, Gautama, Manu, Yajnavalkya or Vishnu—there is agreement
that hunger is satiated for a longer time with meat. Besides the standard
sesame, barley, rice, beans, water, root, shoot and fruit, the recommended
foods include fish, deer, sheep, goat, bird, boar, rabbit, turtle, rhinoceros,
crane and even domesticated animals. The Buddhists and Jains condemned
the meat offerings. Over time, more and more merchants, and later priests,
embraced the practice of vegetarianism, making it an indicator of elite
Hinduism.
Old stories were being transformed into written epics such as the
Ramayana and the Mahabharata at this time, which explicitly explain that a
hermit-householder (grihastha) is different from an ordinary householder
(grihapati). The grihapati feeds only himself and his family. The grihastha
feeds others.

Ramayana

The Ramayana is the story of prince Ram’s adventures in the forest. The
events that inspired this epic may have taken place nearly 3,000 years ago,
around the time that the Vedic culture spread to the lower Gangetic plains of
Kosala (modern Ayodhya) and Videha (modern Bihar). But the epic was
written down much later. The texts we have now are about 2,000 years old.
In the epic, Ram’s father, Dashratha, dies without a son by his side, a
tragedy for someone with four sons. His body is preserved in oil and
cremated in the absence of his eldest son, revealing how no one can control
one’s future.
While in exile in the forest, Ram buries the demon Viradha, but cremates
the vulture Jatayu, who dies trying to stop the rakshasa-king Ravana from
abducting Ram’s wife, Sita. When Sita is finally rescued, and Ravana
killed, Ravana too is cremated. Ravana’s mother is described as a rakshasa-
woman, but his father is a Brahmin man, Vaishrava.
 Ram’s ancestors die prematurely in the story, burnt to death by an angry
ascetic called Kapila, who they wrongfully accused of theft. To enable their
rebirth, another of Ram’s ancestors, Bhagirath, gets the gods to let the
celestial river Ganga flow down on earth. Fearing her fall would break the
foundations of earth, Bhagirath also enlists the help of Shiva. Shiva, the god
of asceticism, smears his body with the ashes of the dead. He catches Ganga
in the locks of his hair. When the ashes of the dead are mixed with the
waters of the Ganga, we are told, the dead will be born once again and get
another chance to live a human life. This story popularised the idea of
casting bones of the dead in water, after cremation, and the idea of ‘another
chance to live’.

Mahabharata

The Mahabharata is one of the world’s longest epics, composed around the
same time as the Ramayana and the Dharma-shastra. Here we learn of
Swarga, the paradise of the Devas, enjoyed by the ancestors who upheld
dharma by regularly performing the ritual of yagna to feed the gods. Their
stay in Swarga lasted for as long as the Devas had repaid their debt. Thus,
Mahabhisha and Yayati and Indradyumna are cast out after their merits run
out.
The Mahabharata introduces us to the Pitr-loka where ancestors hang
upside down, fearing and awaiting rebirth. Rishis like Agastya and
Jaratkaru who shun marriage are tormented by visions of suffering
ancestors until they marry and produce children.
The Mahabharata also speaks of another heaven beyond Swarga, for
those who do not wish to be reborn. These were Hindu alternatives to the
Buddha-loka and Siddha-loka of the monastic orders. The Mahabharata
provides us with a glimpse of gloomy Naraka, where people suffer on
account of bad karma.
The Mahabharata is also a treatise on the cost of war and violence. Of
widows beating their breasts and unbinding their hair to mourn for dead
husbands, of orphans wailing. The dead are burnt in the battlefield itself,
along with dead horses and elephants, the fuel for which is provided by the
wood from broken chariots. This is to prevent dogs and crows from feeding
on the flesh of great warriors. So many had died that it was feared that
entire forests would have to be cut down to cremate them all individually.
Later regional folk tales related to the Mahabharata draw attention to
certain customs and beliefs around death. Pandu, father of the Pandava
brothers, tells his sons to eat his flesh after his death in order to acquire his
powers. But Krishna stops the orphans from doing so. Sahadeva alone eats
a piece of flesh carried by ants and so acquires the power of foresight. He
can see everything that is to happen in the future, but Krishna tells him
never to share this information voluntarily, for the future is inevitable and
nothing can change it, so it is best kept secret. A similar story is told to
explain why doctors and leatherworkers are considered impure and why
crows are linked to the dead. Dhanwantari, the first doctor, told humans to
eat his flesh to obtain all knowledge related to health and healing. But the
gods prevented humans from doing so. The only ones who did it were
doctors and Chandalas, which is why they are considered impure and
shunned. Ants and crows, which eat flesh, were annoyed that the flesh of
the dead was being given to fire and water, and so the Brahmins promised
to feed them the pinda instead.
Another folklore based on the Mahabharata relates the story of Arjuna
mourning his son Abhimanyu, killed in the fifteenth year of his life. To
console him, Krishna takes Arjuna to Swarga, where he finds Abhimanyu
alive. But Abhimanyu does not recognise Arjuna. When Arjuna persists in
calling him son, Abhimanyu says that he has lived many lives and does not
remember any of them. In previous lives, he may well have been father to
Arjuna too. There is no point in remembering the past; we must focus on
the present. The lesson is that dead children need to be forgotten so that we
pay more attention to the living ones.
The Gita is part of the Mahabharata, and many people choose to read
passages from the Gita after funerals instead of the Garuda Purana. The
Gita reinforces the idea of rebirth, the transitory nature of the flesh and the
eternity of the soul. ‘At birth, the soul wears the flesh as fresh clothes and
discards them at the time of death.’

Puranas

The Puranas were composed between the fifth and the tenth century as
Brahmins took Vedic culture beyond the Gangetic plains to the rest of India.
They offered local kings services related to kingship and statecraft. To
establish royal authority and promote the idea of discipline in society,
Puranic stories elaborate the nature of Naraka or hell reserved for rule-
breakers.
 In the Rig Veda, we learn of Naraka for the first time, a dark bottomless
pit for wicked people and murderers. This is repeated in the Atharva Veda.
In the Shatapatha Brahmana, composed some 500 years later, Naraka is a
place of suffering and pain. In the Mahabharata, it is a sad place with no
trees and rivers, its residents lonely and in pain. Then, another 500 or so
years later, in the Dharma-shastras of Manu and Yajnavalkya, we find a list
of twenty-one hells. The Vamana Purana, an early Purana dated to 500 ce,
also speaks of twenty-one hells. However, the Bhagavata Purana, which is
from about 900 ce, mentions twenty-eight hells. By the time of the Padma
Purana, in 1200 ce, the number has grown further: seven hells, each with
six divisions, further divided into two sections, one for crimes committed
voluntarily and another for crimes committed involuntarily, bringing the
total to eighty-four (7x6x2). The Agni Purana, dated to 1500 ce, speaks of
five hells, each with twenty-eight divisions, bringing the total to 140
(5x28). Thus, we see a rising number of hells to punish those who do not
follow the rising number of rules that are designed to make society more
orderly.
Puranic lore is not just about death and rebirth of human life but also the
death and rebirth of the world. The four-yuga concept is amplified upon in
it. We learn of pralaya and the death of the world, and how each cosmic
rebirth sees the rebirth of a new Manu, a new Vyasa and a set of new seven
sages, the Sapta-rishi, who bring back the ancient Vedic ways. This was
perhaps in response to the violence that societies experienced and was a
way of giving people hope.
In the Puranas, the story of Shiva and Vishnu become prominent. Both
gods speak of death, rebirth and liberation. Shiva is linked to the preta and
the Chandala in his Bhairava form. We encounter rebirth when Sati
reappears as Parvati and marries Shiva. Ram and Krishna, avatars of
Vishnu, experience birth and death. Debts incurred in the Ramayana are
repaid in the Mahabharata. For example, Ram refuses to look at other
women but when he is Krishna he dances with many women. Ram who
protects Surya’s son Sugriva against Indra’s son Vali in Ramayana ends up
defending Indra’s son Arjuna against Surya’s son Karna in the Mahabharata.
Thus, the idea of karma was explained through the two epics which
captured two lifetimes of Vishnu.
Vishnu is connected to violent deaths through the stories of Parashuram,
Ram and Krishna. Parashurama killed the king who killed his father and
stole his father’s cow. He proceeded to exterminate the line of kings who
disrespected dharma. He did pinda-daan for his father with their flesh and
offered tarpan with their blood. Later, he forgave the warrior clans and
enabled them to repopulate themselves with the help of one warrior who
was protected by the Goddess.
The Garuda Purana, a relatively late composition, provides not only an
elaboration of hells but also an account of the journey of the dead. This
suggests influence of Tantric ideas and shares much with the Tibetan Book
of the Dead. Here Vishnu educates Garuda who transmits the knowledge to
earthly sages who hear the Puranas in the Naimisha forest.
 The idea of higher heavens linked to Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva is
introduced in the Puranas and later elaborated in Bhakti literature.

Sthala Purana

While the Dharma-shastra literature does not refer to temples and

pilgrimages in the context of funeral rites, essays (nibandha) on
Dharmashastra written after the twelfth century make a connection between
them. The Puranic literature talks of pilgrimages at length, and encourages
everyone to do shradh in these spots to make the ancestors happy. In the
Matsya Purana, there are 1,200 verses devoted to pilgrimages, over 3,000 in
the Varaha Purana, over 4,000 in the Padma Purana and over 6,000 in the
Brahma Purana. In the Skanda Purana, one is told that Aryavarta has over
three-and-a-half crore holy pilgrim sites. The contrast between Dharma-
shastra and Puranic literature is remarkable indeed.
Pilgrim spots are always located next to vast water bodies, like rivers
(Srirangam islands of Kaveri) or even the sea (Ganga Sagar,
Rameshwaram). The belief that rivers enable rebirth may have led to the
popularity of riverside pilgrim spots such as Godavari’s Nashik and
Kaveri’s Srirangapatanam. Instead of burying bones and ashes as in Vedic
times, they were immersed in water. Another ritual that became popular in
later times was the ten-day ritual to provide a temporary body to the preta in
order to travel to Yama-loka.
Various local Sthala-Purana and Desha-Mahatmya describe where Ram
performed shradh for his father. Pilgrims are encouraged to do the same.
Spots that bend and turn towards their source are especially sacred. For
instance, in Nashik, Ram wanted to perform the shradh ritual at the point
where the east-flowing Godavari, that originates nearby, bends and flows
westward for a short distance. Similarly, in Kashi, where the south-flowing
Ganga turns north briefly. Here, Ravana took the form of a Brahmin and
advised Ram to fetch the rare golden deer as an offering to his illustrious
father. Offering meat to the dead was a common practice in ancient India,
before more and more upper-caste Hindus began to consider meat and
blood as a polluting agent in medieval times. While Ram was away hunting,
Ravana abducted Sita.
In Rameshwaram, we are told, Ravana himself agreed to perform the
shradh rituals for Ram as he was the only Brahmin around. That is why,
when Ram killed Ravana, he had to perform rituals in Rameshwaram to
wash away the demerit of Brahma-hatya, the crime of killing a Brahmin.
There is also a story about how Ram wanted to perform the shradh ritual
in Gaya. He went to the forest looking for suitable offerings and Brahmins
who would accept those offerings. While he was away, to Sita’s amazement,
the spirit of her father-in-law and the ancestors before him arrived and
sought offerings from her. She had nothing to give. But the ancestors said
that even if she offers them only a ball of sand with affection, they would be
content. After the ancestors had been fed with balls of sand and had
departed, Sita went to bathe. Ram arrived with Brahmins, and found Sita
nowhere. So, he performed the rituals and fed the Brahmins on his own.
When Sita returned, Ram chastised her wife for dereliction of wifely duties.
Sita explained what had transpired in his absence, but he refused to believe
her. She declared the river and the banyan tree of Gaya were her witnesses.
The river did not speak up, and so Sita cursed the river at Gaya to flow
underground, as it does to this day. The banyan tree of Gaya testified to
Sita’s honesty. So, even today, pinda offerings are made to the banyan tree
of Gaya. Significantly, the story tells us that it is perfectly fine to offer balls
of sand, like Sita did, instead of balls of mashed rice as is tradition.
Agama

Agama texts are linked to temple traditions of Hinduism. These texts are
especially popular in South India. Temple rituals were designed to
humanise the gods, make them participate in human affairs. The immortal
gods, for example, do not perform these rituals as they have no ancestors
and no need for children. But when Vishnu descends to earth as an avatar,
he experiences life and death, and so is obliged to perform this ritual for his
parents. Therefore, in many Vishnu temples, we find the deity performing
shradh rituals for his parents.
Just before the winter solstice, during the waning moon, an elaborate
shradh is held over three days in the Jagannath temple in Puri, Odisha.
Lamps are lit, inviting the presiding deity Jagannath’s ancestors to eat—
most specifically, his parents through various avatars: Aditi and Kashyapa,
parents of the Vamana avatar; Kaushalya and Dashratha, parents of the Ram
avatar; Devaki and Vasudeva, Yashoda and Nanda, biological and foster
parents of the Krishna avatar; and even Gundicha and Indradyumna, who
built the Jagannath temple.
Every year, in the month of Magha (January–February), many temples
provide pinda-daan to Bhishma of the Mahabharata. He chose to remain
celibate so that his father could remarry. As he had no children of his own,
Bhishma is trapped in the land of the dead forever, unable to be reborn, and
so depends on others for nourishment. This serves a warning to those who
choose to be childless and explains the Hindu obsession with marriage and
family. In the epic, Bhishma had the power to choose the time of his death.
He chose to die after the winter solstice because he wanted to avoid the
ancestors who visit humans in the dark and colder half of the year. He died
on the eighth day (ashtami) of the waxing moon (shukla-paksha) in the
lunar month of Magha, after the sun enters the zodiac of Capricorn (Makara
Sankranti), a few weeks after the winter solstice. So, every year, on this day,
mashed rice balls are offered to Bhishma in Vishnu temples. It is said that
he chanted the thousand names of Vishnu as he lay dying, and Vishnu
assured him that he would be remembered for all eternity and fed by the
living even though he died childless. This story and ritual are meant to
remind people of the importance of establishing a household before
considering renunciation and the monastic life.

Tantra

From the eighth to the fifteenth century, we find the rise of Tantra literature.
This was the result of Vedic practices spreading via Puranic stories to the
wider Indian population across the subcontinent beyond the Gangetic
plains. Here, there were many encounters with local practices that clearly
valued the body as much as the mind.
More and more scriptures from this period refer to the body (tanu), its
koshas (layers), chakras (nodes) and nadis (channels). There are stories of
how it is possible for experts in Tantra to leave their flesh and liberate their
ghost to travel and occupy the bodies of others. There are sorcerers in these
tales that can enslave the preta and turn them into a vetala to do their
bidding. More and more temples show images of Shiva and Shakti in their
fierce forms of Bhairava and Chamunda alongside the dogs of the
cremation grounds. There are stories of ghosts who haunt the living, ghosts
who drive people mad, cause sickness, miscarriage and misfortune.
Witchcraft and magical rituals gain prominence, and a greater value is
placed on astrology, forecasting, geomancy, spirit-calling and other occult
rites. Deities are associated with death. Crematoriums become a place of
potent dangerous power. In Tantric texts, the female body, sex and violence
are combined with transgressive rituals in crematoriums to conquer the fear
of death.
There are references to sorcery in folk retellings of the Ramayana and the
Mahabharata. Sorcerers are said to have use for the ash, skulls and bones of
the dead. This increases the demand for Vedic rituals, where the corpse is
destroyed by burning and breaking the skull, and rituals are performed to
drive the preta to pitra-loka, away from the reach of sorcerers. This is the
period when Hanuman and Bhairava rise in popularity. They are seen as
forms of Shiva, who serve goddesses such as Kali who protect people from
malevolent spirits.
A whole set of Vedic rituals is prescribed to make rebirth possible.
Failing this, it is said, the dead will wander as ghosts, haunting humans, and
vulnerable to shamans, sorcerers and other Tantra experts.
There is much in common between the Garuda Purana and the Tibetan
Book of the Dead (Bardo Thodol) composed by the Guru Padmasambhava.
Both show Tantric influence and both emerged in the Tantric Age. The
Buddhist work fixes a period of forty-nine days between death and rebirth.
It took forty-nine days of contemplation for Siddharth to become Buddha
Three phases are described: the one immediately after death when the ghost
is confused, the one thereafter which is full of fearful imagery reminding
one of attachments and desires, and finally the phase of rebirth for those
unable to break free from samsara. Like the Garuda Purana, the Bardo
Thodol is read out around the time of death, to facilitate the journey of the
dead.

Bhakti

Vedic scriptures insist that rituals must be performed with shraddha, faith,
not mechanistically. But typically, Vedic rituals are more about precision
and discipline than about emotion. However, over time, emotion came to
dominate and overtake ritual practices in India. In the early phase of the
Bhakti movement, emotion was very much linked to temples and temple
rituals, as we find in the stories of Alvars and Nayamnars of Tamil Nadu
who lived around the seventh century. By the time of the sant-kavi tradition
in the sixteenth century, however, emotion expressed through song took
centre stage.
Ritual started losing its grip in twelfth-century Karnataka with Basava
and the sharana gurus of the Lingayat movement valuing direct connection
with the divine. The body was smeared with three parallel horizontal ash
marks representing the end of the three worlds, and the three bodies, to
liberate the spirit, the atma, represented by a pebble worn around the neck.
 Around the fifteenth century, a new kind of emotional and romantic
bhakti, based on music, started gaining prominence. Some saw the divine
with form (saguna) enshrined in temples; others saw it without form
(nirguna), without limits or boundaries. In the Tamil Periya Puranam, we
hear of Nayanar saints who pass through fire in order to meet their lord
inside the temple. There was also the young poet-saint Dyaneshwara who
voluntarily gave up his body after translating the Bhagavad Gita into
Marathi. In folk songs, we hear of Garuda coming to earth to take the poet-
saint Tukaram directly to Vaikuntha. Rajasthani princess-saint Mirabai, we
are told, disappears after entering the sanctum sanctorum of a Krishna
temple. Some argue these are tales of violence against new ideas
challenging orthodoxies couched in mythic metaphor.
In these movements, bhakti becomes the method by which death can be
overcome. The Garuda Purana too speaks of bhakti, but not at the cost of
ritual. The ritual feeding of the dead must continue, and God’s name
chanted alongside. This is when the chanting of Ram’s name and of Shiva’s
name becomes part of funerals.
Chanting God’s name is supposed to keep death away. When Ajamila
chants ‘Narayana-Narayana’, he is rescued by Vishnu-duta from the
clutches of Yama-duta. When Markandeya chants, ‘Om Namah Shivayah’,
he is rescued by Shiva himself from Yama. In the Bengali Ramayana, we
are told Ram cannot kill a Rakshasa saint called Tarani-sen because the
latter has tattooed his body with Ram’s name. Finally, Ram shoots an arrow
into his un-tattooed mouth and promises him a place in Saket, the celestial
Ayodhya for devotees of Ram. For those who chant Krishna’s name, there is
a special heaven called Go-loka, where Krishna plays the flute to bring bliss
into the hearts of his steadfast devotees.

Islam

Muslims first came to India as traders in South India in the seventh century,
then as raiders from the northwest in the tenth century, and finally as rulers
who established themselves in Delhi from the twelfth century. They were
confronted with Rajput warriors who chose death over perceived dishonour,
and whose wives and widows chose to burn themselves rather than be
captured by enemies—a controversial and now illegal practice that was
once the object of great veneration. This period saw stones and plaques
raised to heroes and satis.
 The Muslims bury their dead, with the head often turned in the direction
of Mecca. Burial rituals are meant to be simple so that nothing comes
between the dead and God. But the sultans of Delhi, flush with wealth, built
grand tombs for warlords (emirs) and holy men (pir). This was a Persian
practice, quite unlike the simple desert burials of the Arabs, amongst whom
Islam first emerged in the early seventh century. The royal mausoleums of
these sultans were surrounded by gardens and fountains to remind people of
heaven (Jannat), and were inspired by the grand walled gardens that Persian
emperors had built since pre-Islamic times. Dargahs were built around the
tombs (mazaar) of pirs, much like the Buddhist chaityas built around stupas.
The pre-Vedic rituals of burying the dead in a seated position, once
sidelined and frowned upon, returned to the mainstream, especially in the
southern parts of India, amongst rich landowners and peasants. More and
more monastic orders (matha) became comfortable with the idea of raising
a samadhi for the guru. Earlier, even when such memorials existed, they
were kept in seclusion, but now they gradually became pilgrim spots. In
Rajasthan, and later amongst the Marathas, pavilions known as ‘chhatris’
where erected at the site where a king was cremated.
Islam believes in Judgement Day (Qayamat). Muslims speak of Azrael,
the angel of death, whose subordinate angels took the souls out of the body,
forcibly in case of the reluctant and gently in case of the willing. They
speak of record-keepers who keep an account of good deeds as well as bad
deeds, and of angels who ask the dead soon after burial if they believe in
God and his final prophet. Nineteen angels are described as tormenting the
wicked in hell.
These concepts intermingled with the Hindu ideas of multiple hells,
Yama, Yama-duta and Chitragupta. The thirteenth-century philosopher
Madhava from Karnataka even spoke of souls who were unworthy of
rebirth, the Tamo-yogyas, who would never be able to rise out of Naraka.
The Turkish and Afghan sultans were influenced by Chinese technology
and Persian court culture. They introduced pen (kalam) and paper (kagaz) to
India. Record-keeping or bahi-khata became an important Hindu concept.
Chitragupta, scribe of Yama, was shown with a pen and inkpot in hand.
Haridwar, where the Ganga flows into the plains, became a place where
family-tree records were maintained by special priests, known as the Panda,
in their long notebooks.
Islamic talk of God’s mercy appealed to Hindus who chose emotional
bhakti-marga over the intellectual gyan-marga and ritualistic karmamarga.
The payment of debt liberated the dead in the old days. Now there was an
alternative, the mercy of God.

Christianity

While Christ lived in Israel 2,000 years ago, Christianity became a

dominant religion only about 1,700 years ago, when the Roman Empire
turned Christian, and religion became a political lever to unify and control
the empire. And that is why, in the New Testament of the Bible, we find
Jesus speaking of God who is merciful and forgiving, while John speaks of
God whose angels go to battle against Satan, led by Jesus, the warrior. In
the tenth century, Christianity clashed with Islam. During these crusades,
the idea of God as judge dominated the world from Spain to Sindh. The
Mongol invasions of the twelfth century popularised the idea of End of the
World, and Judgement Day. This probably led to elaboration of concepts
such as Kalki and Pralaya in the Puranas.
 In fourteenth-century Italy, Dante wrote The Divine Comedy. Many have
noticed the similarities between the Garuda Purana and The Divine Comedy.
Unlike the common hell that is peculiar to Christian mythology, Dante
describes different hells for different crimes, as does the Garuda Purana. In
the narration, Dante is the pilgrim who is accompanied by three people: the
intellectual Virgil, the compassionate Beatrice and the mystic St. Bernard,
which resonates with the different Hindu paths to moksha. These
similarities make one wonder if he was exposed to Puranic writings—
although this is unlikely because the Europeans had not yet discovered the
sea route to India. Did these ideas spread to Europe via Arabs, like Indian
numerals, boardgames and folk tales? We can only speculate.
However, the Garuda Purana and The Divine Comedy are not identical as
they come from two very different mythic world views. For Dante, the
inferno is a place of eternal suffering, while in the Garuda Purana, hell is a
place of temporary suffering, a place to remind a soul not to repeat past
misdeeds in future lives. The Garuda Purana’s hells are overseen by Yama
who, unlike Dante’s God, cannot forgive. Only Vishnu or Shiva, the higher
gods, have that power. Dante refers to a purgatory where the dead wait until
the Final Judgement, a concept not found in Hindu mythology. The Garuda
Purana has hells for those who torture and kill animals, something that
Dante’s work is not concerned with. He focuses instead on punishing
soothsayers, fortune-tellers and astrologers, which is not a concern in Hindu
mythology. While most punishments are similar, involving weapons,
animals and torture, there are some unique punishments that The Divine
Comedy conjures up. For example, the fortune-teller will spend eternity
with the head twisted around to the back rather than facing the front. The
proud are forced to bend by carrying heavy weights on their back. The
indecisive have to take decisions as they are chased by bees. Dante is
strongly influenced by Greek mythology as revealed by references to the
river Styx and the three-headed dog Cereberus. In Dante’s world, money is
bad and poverty is good, an idea not reflected in the Garuda Purana where
Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, is the consort of Vishnu himself, ushering
in auspiciousness wherever she goes.
While there are punishments for self-indulgence (lust, greed, gluttony,
anger), violence (oppression, exploitation) and maliciousness (jealousy,
pride, theft, perjury), there are no specific punishments for falling short of
what Hindu scriptures call ‘dharma’: the responsibility of householders
towards the household and of kings towards the kingdom. Dante speaks of
hells for those who reject Christianity and for pagans not aware of Christ, a
missionary concern not found in Hinduism.
 Older forms of Christianity came into India through trade routes nearly
2,000 years ago. However, missionary Christianity came with the
Portuguese only in the sixteenth century. With conversion came tensions
between the Christian practice of burial and the Hindu practice of
cremation. In Goa, there are memories of early converts exhuming the
bodies of the dead at night from the church cemetery in order to secretly
cremate them in their backyard. This led to the Goa Inquisition to enforce
Christian custom and belief on the pagans.
Across India, we find churches with cemeteries full of tombstones with
the names and the lifespans of the dead. These became widespread during
the British Raj. Christians, like Muslims before them, popularised the idea
that a person who dies by suicide should not be buried in sacred consecrated
ground. Even today, many ideas related to euthanasia and assisted dying for
the old and the sick, and organ donation are influenced by Christian values
as the earliest modern hospitals in India were built in British times by
Christian missionaries.

Modern Times

The Hindu treatment of widows shocked the Europeans and they wrote
about it extensively. This led to the passing of laws forbidding the practice
of widow burning and child marriage. Social reformers encouraged the
remarriage of widows. While the caste system is frowned upon and
forbidden by law, the practice of separate crematoriums for separate castes
continues to this day in some places.
 More and more people are avoiding burning bodies with wood and
choose electric crematoriums citing environmental concerns. These days,
the feeding of the dead is usually done only on the days immediately after
the funeral, during death anniversaries, in the fortnight of the ancestors or
during visits to pilgrim spots. Death rituals once performed over several
days are now compressed to a single rite.
More and more women perform funeral rituals. They are no longer
forbidden in the crematorium. There is increasing talk of allowing informed
consent-based assisted death for the old and the infirm, who have
completed worldly duties like sages of yore. An increasing number of
people are amenable to the idea of donating organs after death, citing the
story of Dadhichi’s donation of his bones to Indra, and verses from the
Vedas that speak of how our flesh reintegrates itself with nature after death:
the mind with the moon, the eyes with the sun, the breath with the wind.
OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter 8

Gods of Death
In which we appreciate the many
Hindu gods associated with death, liberation and immortality

Once, all the gods went to Mount Kailasa to pay their respects to Shiva.
Brahma came on his goose, Vishnu on his eagle, Surya on his horse,
Chandra on his antelope, Yama on his buffalo. Vishnu’s eagle, Garuda,
noticed that before entering Kailasa, Yama’s eyes fell on a tiny sparrow that
had perched itself on a ledge near the gate, chirping a welcome song for all
the gods. Yama frowned and crinkled his brow before shrugging his
shoulders and joining the gods. Garuda, who was the king of all birds,
concluded that the days of the sparrow were numbered. Why else would the
god of death frown on seeing it? Perhaps the sparrow would die of
starvation on the icy cold slopes of Kailasa. Garuda looked at the little bird
—so young, innocent, eager to see the world. Overwhelmed with parental
affection, he made a decision: to keep the little sparrow out of Yama’s
heartless reach. Taking the bird in the palm of his hands, he flew across
seven hills and seven rivers until he reached a forest, where he left the bird
on a tree laden with tasty fruit. When he returned, he saw Yama smiling at
him. Upon his enquiring, Yama revealed, ‘When I was entering Kailasa, I
saw this sparrow here that was destined to die today, eaten by a python that
lives on the mango tree that grows in a forest far away, beyond seven hills
and seven rivers. I wondered how he was going to fly there. But you made
it happen.’ Garuda was horrified. Instead of saving the bird, he had ended
up killing it. Then Vishnu said to him, ‘You saved the python from starving
to death. Is that not a good thing?’
This folk tale draws attention to the inevitability of death. Death exists
for life. To live we need food, and for food, predators kill their prey, cattle
uproot plants. Basically, when we eat, something dies, directly or indirectly.
The deer dies to feed the tiger. Standing trees are consumed by termites.
Hundreds of animals and plants are killed to make space for farms that
produce food for humans. Thus, life and death are intimately connected. All
food is flesh, obtained by killing the living. Life feeds on life (jivo jivatsya
jivanam). He who is immortal feeds no one. He who is outside the cycle of
birth and death neither eats nor is eaten, neither feeds nor is fed.
If Yama is the god associated with death, then Brahma is the god who
creates the cycle of life and death, Vishnu is the god who helps humans
cope with the horrors of life and death, and Shiva is the god who breaks the
cycle of life and death.
Yama is the oldest god associated with death, mentioned in the Rig Veda.
Many other gods linked to different aspects of death have emerged since
then. In Vedic times, death rituals were intimately linked with fire, the earth.
Niritti was the goddess of decay, degeneration and ghosts, who probably
later transformed into the gaunt and ghost-riding Chamunda. Mahabharata
personified death as a goddess called Mrityu, who weeps at the thought of
having to kill the living. In the Puranas, Shiva roams in the crematoriums,
Durga kills the buffalo-demon that is probably representative of Yama, and
Vishnu descends on earth as an avatar that experiences birth and death, and
so empathises with the human condition. The river-goddess Ganga is
intimately linked with rebirth. In the Tantric Age, as more and more people
spoke of ghosts and hauntings, the mighty Hanuman became a god to be
invoked for protection.

Yama

In the Rig Veda, Yama is the first man to die. He refuses to have sex with
his twin sister, Yami, since incest is taboo, and eventually dies childless, to
be trapped forever in the land of the dead. He becomes the oldest ancestor,
king of the dead. But he also becomes the first sunset and his sister becomes
the first night. Another word for night, therefore, is Yamini.
In Zoroastrian mythology that has a common ancestry with Vedic
mythology, we hear of Yima, the first human, who protects all animals from
a terrible blizzard. Yima is like Manu, who saves all life by gathering plants
and animals and placing them on a boat during a great flood, a story we
learn from a later text, Shatapatha Brahmana. Yima’s name reminds us of
Yama while his role is similar to Manu. In Vedic mythology, Yama and
Manu are brothers, sons of the sun-god Surya. Yima too is linked with a
solar deity. Yama rules the dead; Manu rules the living.
 Manu’s sons establish the solar and the lunar dynasty of kings. Kings are
told to emulate Yama because death treats all equally, favouring neither
saint nor sinner. Yama, over time, becomes the overseer of the process of
rebirth. He ensures that everyone repays their debts. He is fair and
dispassionate, without any favourites. He is also wise, explaining to
Nachiketa in the Katha Upanishad what happens after death, a role
performed by Vishnu in the Garuda Purana.
Yama is visualised as holding a noose in one hand and a staff in another.
He travels on a buffalo. The noose is to pull the preta out of the body and
the staff is to ensure that no one escapes without repaying their debt. It is
well known that no one escapes Yama. The reason why the buffalo is linked
to Yama in Puranic literature is not clear. Some speculate that life is bright
day, like white sesame and white cows, while death is dark night, like black
sesame, and black buffalo. Others say it may be because some buffaloes are
difficult to tame, and generally stubborn in nature, like death, which is
relentless.

In the bhakti tradition, Shiva overpowers Yama and becomes known as

Yamantaka, one who has overpowered death. Devotees sing a hymn to
Shiva, known as Mrityunjaya, that enables the conquest of death.
Markandeya, rescued from Yama by Shiva, is the eternal sage who
witnesses the creation and destruction of the world and records the passage
of time from the pralaya (death of cosmos), all through the four yugas (eras)
that constitute a kalpa (life of a cosmos) in the Puranas.
Yama is located in the south, with Agni located to his east and Niritti
located to his west. His companion is Chitragupta, the scribe, who holds a
book, a stylus and an inkpot in his hand. Yama is also linked to Shani, or the
god of Saturn, who in turn is linked with time, or Kala, the one who cuts the
week and thus ends time. Shani rides a crow or a vulture, both of which are
linked to death. In popular traditions, Yama and Shani are linked to Shiva
through Kaal-Bhairava, the god of time who devours everything.
Yama is also linked with dogs, the Sarameya, children of Sarama, the
divine female dog who serves Indra. Yama’s dogs have four eyes each. In
most cultures around the world, death has been linked with dogs. In Greek
mythology, there is the three-headed Cereberus. In Egypt, there is the dog-
headed Anubis. Dogs with discoloured patches above their eyes are
considered to have ‘four-eyes’ and so are believed to be auspicious and
integral to Zoroastrian funeral ceremonies. This is yet another reminder that
Zoroastrianism and Hinduism have common roots, though Zoroastrianism,
that once flourished in Persia (Iran), is anchored on the idea of one life
while Hinduism embraced the idea of rebirth.

Agni

Balancing the flesh-devouring Agni is Vayu, the wind-god, located in the

northwest direction. Vayu is god of wind and god of breath, prana. He
enlivens the flesh.
 Of the over 1,000 hymns in the Rig Veda, over 200 are dedicated to Agni,
the fire-god, through whom the Vedic people connected with the Devas,
who lived in the celestial regions.
Agni is called Kravyada when his flames consume a dead body and light
the path for preta to travel to the land of the dead. He is called Jataveda
when he carries food to the realm of the gods. The two fires are also
differentiated. One is the pure fire of the sacrificial altar and is located in
the east. The other is the impure fire of the funeral ritual and is lit in the
south. Fire itself is visualised as having two faces, one facing east and the
other facing south. In Vaastu, Agni is located in the southeast, that is,
between the eastern direction of the Devas and the southern direction of the
preta.
Agni rides a goat, which was in Vedic times sacrificed to please both the
gods and the ancestors. Now no one remembers these ancient practices.
Mrityu

In the Mahabharata, the earth wept as she was crushed by the weight of
creatures that never died. To ease her burden, Brahma created Mrityu, the
goddess of death. But she refused to do her duty at first and was only
persuaded to do so on the condition that she would not have to kill anyone.
People would die because of their own karma. She would only enable the
process.
This belief that humans die because of their karma, and not because of
the will of the gods, is very different from the ancient Greek belief that
human lifespans are determined by the length of a thread spun by the fates.
The idea of life and death being dependent not on a divine cause but on the
consequences of our own actions is reinforced in the Mahabharata when
Bhishma tells the Pandavas the story of Gautami, a widow who would not
let the fowler Arjunaka hurt the snake whose bite had killed her only child.
She said, ‘Hurting that snake will not bring back my son. It will only
generate demerit that will contribute to our misfortune. My son was killed
by his own karma, not because of a serpent.’
Because he created death, Brahma is not worshipped in the way other
gods are. Shiva and Vishnu, on the other hand, are worshipped because they
enable rebirth and provide the path to liberation.

Niritti

Niritti is the goddess of ghosts and lives in the southwest. She causes
rotting and decay. In Vedic literature, she is mentioned as being fearsome
and is asked to stay away, for she brings both fear and misfortune. She is
linked with Kotravai of Tamil Sangam literature, the wild goddess of the
battlefields who eats the flesh of the fallen. She is also linked to Alakshmi,
the goddess of misfortune.
If ‘degenerative’ Niritti sits in the southwest and embodies death and
decay, she is balanced by the ‘regenerative’ moon-crested Ishana-Shiva,
who sits in the northeast and embodies the principle of regeneration. This
connection with Shiva may be the reason why she is often linked to
Chamunda in Tantric and Shaiva lore.

Chamunda
In art, especially from the tenth century ce, when Tantra was on the rise,
Chamunda was portrayed as a gaunt goddess, without skin, just a mass of
blood-oozing flesh, a skeletal (kankala) form with protruding eyes and
fangs, picking her teeth after a meal of flesh. Her companions are wolves,
dogs, vultures, crows and maggots. She rides on the back of a preta. She is
shown seated on a throne made of corpses.
One of the earliest temples in India is the Vetala Deula, or the temple of
the spirit, in Odisha. It is dedicated to Shiva and Shakti in their fiercest
forms as Bhairava and Chamunda. Bhairava is shown as having a decaying
body, devoid of skin, with fangs and protruding eyes, holding a sword in
one hand and a human head in the other. Chamunda is similarly gaunt and
fierce, with flames for hair and her body adorned with entrails and limbs of
the dead, picking bones and flesh stuck in her teeth. She drinks blood and
feasts on the dead. Her companions are the preta, as well as dogs, foxes,
crows, scorpions and vultures that feed on dead bodies scattered in a
battleground or in a village struck by a terrible epidemic or drought. These
temples rose around the same time that stories of Vikramaditya and vetala
were being told in royal courts. It was during this period of history that
death and afterlife became an integral part of Tantra-linked sorcery and
Indian folklore.
In Puranic lore, Bhairava is called Bhuta-pati, the master of ghosts, and
he rides a dog. These ghosts of Bhairava are different from the dead of
Yama-loka, who await rebirth. They have not crossed Vaitarni and are
trapped in the land of the living because their relatives have not performed
the Vedic rites of the dead. Daksha, the primal Vedic priest, son of Brahma,
does not like Shiva and shuns him. He considers Shiva impure. But
Daksha’s daughter, Sati, defies her father and marries Shiva. An angry
Daksha performs a yagna to which he refuses to invite his daughter and her
husband. He has food served to everyone who is present, except Sati and
Shiva. Angry at this insult, Sati jumps into the yagna fire, offering her body
as food to Shiva. Daksha remains indifferent to her death and proceeds with
the ceremony, angering Shiva, who transforms into Bhairava and beheads
him. But the Devas beg Shiva to curtail his anger and forgive Daksha and
restore him back to life.
 This dramatic story comes from the post-Vedic Puranas. It is not found in
the Vedas, Vedangas or Vedanta. Here, Shiva is linked to death, ghosts and
impurity, while Daksha is linked to life, immortality and purity. The two
worlds are brought together by the goddess, Daksha’s daughter Sati, who in
Shiva’s company becomes the corpse-eating, fearsome Chamunda. She is
making sure that the Vedic world of ritual purity learns from Shiva, who
speaks of rebirth and immortality. This clash of two ideas may have
inspired the belief that even leftover food (ucchista) is an offering.
Consumed by dogs and crows, it is an offering to the god of wandering
ghosts, who takes care of those left behind on this side of the Vaitarni.

Shiva

Harappa has seals showing a man seated in yogic posture that may indicate
a kind of proto-Shiva. The Vedas refers to Rudra, a feared wild deity, linked
with animals and plants. By the time the Puranas were composed, Shiva
was a popular manifestation of the divine, a hermit who becomes a
householder. This narrative rose as a counter to Buddhism, the new religion
that was challenging the old Vedic ways and promoted giving up household
life in favour of monasticism.
He was imagined as emerging from a pillar of fire that had no beginning
and no end. In other words, he was neither born nor did he die. He was self-
created: swayambhu. His children, Ganesha and Kartikeya, were ayonija,
not born of the womb. Thus, they were outside the wheel of rebirths.
Shiva wanders in the crematorium like a Chandala, smearing his body
with ash, holding in his hand the skull of Brahma, reminding all of death. In
his Bhairava form, he rides a dog, a symbol of the cremation ground. He is
surrounded by preta, the ghosts of the dead. From his hair flows the Ganga,
offering the promise of rebirth.
Shiva does not see the point of marriage, children, kitchen or household,
as he is immortal and has no ancestors to feed. He owes no one anything as
he is the supreme hermit and has no property or attachments, or karmic
burden. But the goddess tells him, ‘Those who are not hungry must produce
food for the hungry. Have compassion for those who experience birth and
death, even if you have conquered birth and death.’ So, Shiva descends
from Mount Kailasa, the abode of the immortals, and goes to Kashi, on the
banks of the Ganga, where he lives as a householder amongst those who
experience birth and death.
 Since Shiva sits in the north, facing the south, he is called Dakshina-
murti. His wife is called Dakshinayani, daughter of the chief Brahmin,
Daksha, who comes from the south (dakshina). She is called Dashina Kali
or Smashan Kali, and is shown as dark, ferocious and naked, bedecked with
the heads and limbs of the dead, her tongue sticking out, her hair unbound.
She is the patron of Tantric teachers, who disregard rules of impurity and
believe that wisdom lies beyond Brahminical notions of purity. If Shiva is
the north, Shakti is the south. If Shiva is the soul, Shakti is the flesh. If
Shiva rejects sex and violence, she embodies sex and violence. He is
Purusha and she is Prakriti. Together, they create the world. She turns the
hermit into the householder. He turns the wild forest into the regulated
garden. In this process emerges the divide between the pure and the impure:
forbidden, untamed forests and welcoming, controlled fields. Those who
know that such boundaries and divisions are man-made rise above
hierarchies and become the wise ones.
In art, fire and ash represent defeating death with immortality, while
water represents defeating death through regeneration. Both are linked to
Shiva, who smears his forehead with three horizontal lines of ash collected
from funeral pyres, indicating the death of three worlds and three bodies,
and release of atma. From his head flows the Ganga, in which the bones of
the dead are immersed to enable rebirth. If Shiva is swayambhu, his
consort, Shakti, is the womb or yoni through which the dead return to the
world of the living. Their children are ayonija, born by bypassing the
womb.
Fire is physical fire that needs fuel. But tapa is spiritual fire that does not
need fuel. It is churned in the mind through ascetic practices known as
tapasya, which involves control of breath, body and mind. The point of
tapasya is not to gain power but to outgrow the need for power, through
wisdom. So, Shiva, the supreme tapasvin, sits in the north, facing south, the
direction of death, teaching people how to conquer death through sense
control and to overcome memories and desires. Shiva releases the fire of
tapa from his third eye to kill desire (kama), which is why he is called
Kamantaka. He also destroys memory (smara), which is why he is called
Smarantaka. In Shiva lore, the point of tapa is to rise above the cycle of life
and death. The three horizontal lines of ash (tripundra) that Shiva marks his
forehead with is the end of the three worlds and the three bodies that we
occupy. That is why he is called destroyer of three worlds (Tripurantaka).
Unfortunately, most people who churn tapa seek power over the world,
rather than escape from the world. They seek siddhi rather than samadhi.

Shakti

When Sati dies by jumping into the pit of Daksha’s sacred fire, Shiva takes
her charred corpse and wanders the earth. Seeing that he is trapped in
memory and sorrow, the Devas ask Vishnu to liberate him. Vishnu hurls his
discus and cuts Sati’s corpse into tiny pieces, which fall in different parts of
India and become the sites of major power. At each of these Shakti-peeth, or
the seats of the goddess, is located a temple dedicated to the goddess.
Jwalamukhi, in the north, is where her tongue falls. Kamakhya, in the east,
is where her womb falls. There are other temples where her eye, hands, feet,
breasts have fallen. Even in death, the goddess transmits her power,
reminding all that, in nature, life and death are natural processes that follow
each other.
In the first story of rebirth ever told in the Puranas, Sati returns as
Parvati, the princess of the hills, and marries Shiva once again. Only, this
time, she approaches Shiva not after defying her father but through love and
devotion. She does not choose her husband over her father; she unites them.
She gets Shiva to become a groom and come to her father’s house, and
participate in Vedic marriage rituals. She makes him set up a home and
father children, howsoever reluctantly. Thus, she turns the hermit into a
householder and a father of two sons, Ganesha and Kartikeya.
 But Shiva and his children are immortals. They have no ancestors to feed.
So, Parvati makes Shiva descend from the icy mountains of Kailasa to the
vibrant city of Kashi on the banks of the Ganga. In Kailasa, a mountain of
stone covered with snow, there is no vegetation. But then, Shiva needs no
food. In Kashi, Parvati becomes Annapoorna and cooks food. She draws
Shiva’s attention to the cries of the preta, the ghosts in the many
crematoriums on the banks of the Ganga. She asks him to feed them. So,
Shiva becomes a beggar, Bhikshatan, who begs Parvati for food and feeds
the dead in his compassion. He also becomes a guard, the Kotwal who
protects the city from ghosts. In the city of Kashi, Shiva is worshipped as
Kaal-Bhairava, who rides a dog and reminds everyone of death that awaits
the living, in the hope that they will focus on the means to break free from
the wheel of rebirths.
 Shiva’s transformation from hermit to householder is about compassion
for the dead, to be experienced even by those who are immortal. Sati and
Parvati remind Shiva that while he is Maha-Deva, one who has outgrown
hunger, the ordinary gods, the Devas, are hungry for food. She draws
attention to the idea of hunger which sustains culture, and counters the
monastic narrative of fasting and withdrawing from the sensory and
material world. Thus, through the story of Shiva, we see the Brahmin order
challenging the Buddhist and Jain doctrines that favour hermits over
householders.

Ganga

Ganga, the river-goddess, is linked with rebirth. Her story is first told in the
Ramayana: how she once flowed in the paradise of the gods, how she was
made to descend on earth, and how her fall would have broken earth’s
foundations had Shiva not caught her in the locks of his matted hair. This is
a metaphor for the destructive power of material life, represented by the
river, and the protective power of yoga and tapasya, embodied in Shiva, the
hermit. Ganga then is the archetypal water-nymph (apsara). Those whose
ashes and bones are immersed in Ganga escape life as a ghost and get a
chance to be either reborn or liberated.
In the Mahabharata, Ganga is the wife of Shantanu. She drowns her
newborn babies who are actually the celestial Vasu, cursed to experience
mortality. But humans see her action as infanticide and so she leaves the
human realm.
 She is visualised riding a makara, an elephant-headed fish, which is
probably a river-dolphin. She holds a pot, symbol of the womb. Her
movement is seen as serpent-like, linking her to the Nagas.
If Gauri (Parvati) sits on Shiva’s lap, then Ganga sits on his head. Both
engage the hermit with the householder’s life.

Kali

The Tantric Age saw the emergence of many goddesses who were
associated with death, cremation grounds, ghosts and sorcery. We learn of
goddesses who were linked to miscarriages and childhood fevers. We hear
of groups of women who lived in forests and waters and were feared and
revered, such as Matrikas and Mahavidyas. Amongst them were Tara and
Kali, who were visualised as dancing on corpses, adorned with the heads
and limbs of fallen warriors. We find descriptions of goddesses like
Chinnamastika, who stand atop corpses and copulating couples, cut off their
own head and drink their own blood, thus displaying full mastery over the
forces of life and death, hunger and fear.
These goddesses are invoked by sorcerers seeking Siddha powers that
would enable them to conquer death, change shape and size, manipulate
minds, fly in the air, walk on water, and leave their body to travel through
astral planes and communicate with ghosts. In Adbhuta Ramayana,
influenced by Tantric ideas, Mahiravana seeks to sacrifice Ram and
Lakshman to Kali in Patala, but Hanuman beheads Mahiravana instead and
makes Kali sensitive to human fear of death and ghosts.

Chinnamastika is differentiated from Kali. Kali sticks out her tongue to

drink the blood of the Asura who wishes to regenerate. Thus, she blocks
regeneration—and stops the wheel of rebirths. Kali is differentiated from
Chamunda, who has a gaunt skeletal form, feeds on flesh and death and is
not linked to regeneration or liberation. But more often than not,
Chamunda, who sits on a pile of corpses, is conflated with the self-
beheading Chinnamastika, and with Kali or Tara, who dance atop Shiva and
unite with him. This sexual union of the Tantric Shiva and Shakti is a visual
manifestation of the abstract Vedic concept of Purusha and Prakriti.

Durga

Durga is the goddess of kings and of war and is shown battling and
defeating a demon who has taken the form of a buffalo, which is the mount
of Yama, the god of death. As Mahishasuramardini, killer of the buffalo-
demon, she is not just battling the enemy; she is battling death itself.
 This is implied by the fact that Durga is worshipped in the ten days that
follow the fortnight of the ancestors. The first day of prayer is called
Mahalaya, the great dissolution, a reminder of how she enables the shift
from death to new life. In this time, she is also called Shakambari, the
goddess of vegetation, and her worship coincides with the harvest before as
well as after the rains. Her warrior aspect is linked to the sickle and plough.
Her maternal aspect is visualised as a pot full of germinating grains and a
sheaf of medicinal herbs and creepers.
All this makes Durga, the warrior goddess, also the mother goddess, one
linked with death, even liberation, and the other linked with rebirth.
In some folk traditions, the buffalo is worshipped as a god, the temporary
husband of Durga, whose death enables rebirth. Hence, buffaloes are
sacrificed during Durga festivals and their blood is mixed with seeds. This
idea of death and regeneration linked to fertility is an ancient theme
associated with agricultural communities around the world. The earth is the
goddess. Metaphorically, the harvest denotes the killing of the old husband
and the birth of a new one, who will sow the next season’s seed.
It is known that the buffalo was tamed in the Harappan cities (2600–1900
bce) and exported to Mesopotamia. It may have been a symbol of death
since ancient times. Harappan cities also have images of goddesses who are
half-tigers, like the Sphinx. This suggests some continuity with modern
worship of the tiger-riding mother-goddess (Sheravali).
The earliest image of a goddess battling and overpowering a buffalo
dates back to the Kushana period in 100 ce. This image is the earliest
depiction of the goddess who, by the seventh century, came to be known as
Mahishasuramardini and was identified with Durga, the fierce wife of
Shiva. By this time, she was linked to royalty. Warriors who lead battles and
kill their enemies to become kings invoke Durga’s power in order to
conquer their fear of death. Ram invokes her in the Ramayana. The
Pandavas invoke her in the Mahabharata. They offer the heads of their
enemies to Durga, who rewards them with dominion.

Vishnu

The stories about Vishnu complement the stories about Shiva. Shiva is
immortal, so he does not feed the dead. His children are born without
passing through a womb, and so do not experience birth or death. By
contrast, Vishnu enters the mortal world through the womb. As an avatar, he
has parents and children who die, and for whom he performs funeral rituals.
Vaman performs the rituals for Aditi and Kashyapa, and Parashuram for
Renuka and Jamadagni. Ram performs the rituals for Kaushalya and
Dashratha, and Krishna for Devaki and Vasudev, as well as for his foster
parents, Yashoda and Nanda. We find pilgrim spots where these rituals are
said to have been performed by Ram: Kurukshetra, Pushkar, Puri, Nashik,
Gaya, Rameshwaram. Ram even asks Hanuman to serve the living by
protecting them from the dead, which is why Hanuman is evoked when
people fear being haunted and possessed by ghosts.

We are told that Vishnu takes the form of Parashuram, Ram and Krishna
to kill wicked kings in order to lessen the burden of earth. Thus, Vishnu is
also the instrument of death. Death and time exist to ensure dharma on
earth. As Ram, Vishnu voluntarily ends his life by entering the river Sarayu
after completing his worldly duties. As Krishna, Vishnu goes to the land of
the dead and brings back to the world of the living the ghost of his teacher
Sandipani’s son, who was killed prematurely. He also brings back the
ghosts of his six elder brothers, who were killed at birth by Kansa. These
ghosts meet their parents on earth and return to Yama-loka. As Krishna,
Vishnu reveals the secret of rebirth and liberation to Arjuna, a discourse he
later gives to Uddhava before his death. The death of Vishnu’s avatars is not
really death, as Vishnu simply gives up his mortal form and returns to
Vaikuntha rather than go to Yama-loka. Such stories reinforce how the
wisdom of the Vedas, that is, atma and yoga, revealed in texts like the
Bhagavad Gita and the Uddhava Gita, enables one to bypass the wheel of
rebirths.
In Shiva’s heaven, Kailasa, no one is hungry. But Vishnu knows the
importance of hunger in provoking compassion and reflection. So, Vishnu’s
heaven Vaikuntha is the ocean of milk, where there is food for all who are
willing to share. This is why Shiva is called the destroyer while Vishnu is
called the preserver. Hindu mythology makes sense when we appreciate the
centrality of hunger in Hindu metaphysics.

Hanuman

The story of the mighty Hanuman comes from the epic Ramayana, where
he helps Ram rescue his wife Sita, who has been abducted by the rakshasa-
king Ravana. He is linked with restraint, celibacy, contentment and service.
He is both strong and wise, master of the Mantra (from manas, meaning
mind) and the Tantra (from tanu, meaning body). Visualised as a monkey,
he is more powerful than a human. That his father is Vayu, lord of wind and
breath, connects him with yoga. That his teacher is Surya, the sun, connects
him with the Vedas.
 As the Ramayana became popular, Hanuman began to be seen as a form
of Shiva, who protects humans in times of difficulty. As fear of the occult
and ghosts peaked in the Tantric Age between the eighth and the fifteenth
centuries, Hanuman became popular as a protector against ghosts, as well as
sorcerers who enslaved ghosts. Thus, in the Sanskrit Adbhuta Ramayana,
from the fifteenth century, we learn of Patali Hanuman, who goes to the
subterranean regions where everything is upside down. There, he
overpowers Mahiravana and his son, Ahiravana, the sorcerers who wish to
offer the head of Ram to Kali, in order to obtain magical Siddha powers. He
rises back to earth transformed, having sprouted four more heads: that of a
lion, an eagle, a horse and a boar. In other words, the goddess grants him
powers over all occult forces to defeat all malevolent and degenerative
forces. Hanuman is often shown facing south, just like Shiva’s
Dakshinamurti form. He keeps death and ghosts at bay.
In folk Ramayanas it is said that Yama fears Hanuman so much that he
refused to enter Ayodhya, the city of Ram. The gods tell Ram that his period
on earth is over and he needs to return to Vaikuntha. For that Ram has to
die, but he cannot die as long as Yama does not enter Ayodhya, and this will
not happen as long as Hanuman guards the gates of the city. To distract
Hanuman, Ram drops his ring and it slips into a crack on the floor. Ram
asks Hanuman to fetch it. The crack in the floor is a tunnel that leads
Hanuman to Patala. There he finds a mountain made of duplicates of Ram’s
rings. Vasuki, king of the Nagas, explains the mystery to Hanuman, ‘Our
world goes through death and rebirth. In each lifespan, the world witnesses
the arrival of Ram. Then Ram’s ring falls to Patala, a monkey follows it,
and Ram on earth dies, shedding his mortal coil to return to Vaikuntha. As
many rings in the mountain, so many Rams have come and gone. Hanuman
has met each one of them, for he is immortal, but he forgets, and tries to
save them all, in vain.’

OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter 9

Outsmarting Death
In which we learn how ideas of immortality and regeneration
manifested through tales of Soma, Amrita, Sanjivani and Chiranjeevi

Kshaya means decay and degeneration, a natural process. Akshaya means

never-withering, which is a mythic imagination. This can be of four types.
The first involves avoiding degeneration entirely by being immortal, which
gives rise to the concepts of Amrita and Chiranjeevi. The second is about
regeneration, renewal, constantly restoring health and youth, and delaying
death, which gives rise to ideas such as Sanjivani, Naga-mani, Pati-vrata
and Rasayana. The third is having faith that all things that die come back to
life eventually. This is wisdom, that grants liberation (moksha) from death,
and ends fear of death. The fourth type is having faith in a divine being that
never experiences birth or death, who bypasses the womb (ayonija) or is
self-created (swayambhu).

Soma

In Vedic times, Soma juice, squeezed out of the Ephedra shrub, was offered
to the gods on the occasion of the full moon and the new moon, drawing
attention to its waxing and waning. Ephedra contains chemical stimulants
that make one alert and active. But in Puranic times, Soma was linked with
the moon, and its ability to regenerate. The moon, in turn, was connected to
Shiva and Ganga.
 In the Soma-nath Sthala Purana, the moon god is cursed with the disease
of degeneration. Each day, he loses a bit of his lustre. To save himself from
oblivion, he worships Shiva, the god linked with death and rebirth, from
whose topknot flows the river of heaven, Ganga. Shiva places the moon on
his forehead, giving him access to the magical Soma, which restores his
lustre. And so, the waxing and waning moon is linked to regeneration and
rebirth, and is renamed Soma, the very substance that rescued him.
Monday, that is, Soma-vaar, the day of the moon god, is linked to rebirth
and regeneration. In popular culture, when the new-moon night falls on a
Monday, millions make their way to the Ganga to bathe in it, hoping to
liberate their ancestors and their children from the curse of death and bless
them with the boon of regeneration. This day is called Somavati Amavasya
or Sompati Masya.

Amrita

The Rig Veda speaks of a world of permanence where nothing decays. In

the Mahabharata, the gods crave immortality (Amrita). Swarga, the paradise
of these gods, is called Amravati, the immortal city, where no one grows old
or dies. To obtain Amrita, the ocean of milk was churned (manthan) with a
giant spindle made of Mount Meru, kept afloat by a giant turtle. Vasuki, the
Naga king, served as the churning rope.
In the later Puranic tradition, Vishnu takes centre stage in the story. The
ocean of milk is his abode. His eagle, Garuda, carries Mount Meru while he
takes the form of a turtle that keeps the churning spindle afloat. The
churning rope is not Vasuki but Vishnu’s serpent, Adi Ananta Sesha. The
Devas from the sky pull the tail end of the rope while the Asuras pull the
other end. The aim is to release Shri, goddess of fortune, who has dissolved
herself in the ocean. The churning causes the serpent to spew out venom,
Halahala, which is digested by Shiva. Then emerge fourteen jewels (ratna),
one for each phase of the moon. The list varies across texts. But they can be
classified as jewels that bestow authority (dharma), prosperity (artha) and
pleasure (kama).
Authority is symbolised by the elephant, horse, umbrella and bow that
emerge like butter churned out of milk. Prosperity is symbolised by the
wish-fulfilling tree, the wish-fulfilling cow, the wish-fulfilling jewel and the
cornucopia that overflows with grain and gold. Pleasure is represented by
the gandharvas who make music, the apsaras who dance, the kinnaras who
sing, as well as wine and the moon, which contribute to the joyful mood.
Then comes Shri, the goddess of fortune, who chooses Vishnu as her
husband. With her comes Dhanvantari, the god of health and healing, who
carries the pot of Amrita and brings with him the knowledge of Ayurveda.
Both Devas and Asuras want to be immortal. As they fight over the
Amrita, Vishnu takes the form of the enchanting damsel Mohini and offers
to divide it fairly between them. Everyone agrees to submit to the decision
of the beautiful one. Mohini starts pouring the Amrita first in the mouth of
the Devas. Seven Devas receive it and become the seven visible planets, the
graha. This makes one of the Asuras, Svarbhanu, suspicious and he moves
to sit among the Devas. The sun and the moon figure this out and complain
to Vishnu, who cuts off the Asura’s head as he is about to swallow the
nectar. As a result, the Asura is split in two: the immortal head named Rahu,
which chases the sun and the moon, causing eclipses, and the immortal
body named Ketu, which does not know where to go and travels restlessly
across the sky as a comet. Thus, Amrita is linked to the eternal unblinking
celestial bodies, the graha, to eclipses and to comets, the nine players of
Hindu astrology.

The incident destroys the temporary truce between the Devas and the
Asuras. The Devas, rendered immortal by the Amrita, claim all the treasures
and rise to the sky. The mortal Asuras sulk under the earth and swear never
to let the Devas enjoy their treasures in peace. They will attack Amravati
and turn Swarga into a battleground, eternally under siege. The Devas have
all the wealth, but since they do not share they have no peace, a warning to
rich humans who do not perform the five yagnas meant to feed the hungry,
including plants, animals, gods, family and strangers.
 We are told that drops of Amrita fell on earth at various spots, where
temples rose and festivals are celebrated. Those who visit those temples and
participate in those festivals benefit from Amrita. As a result, decay
(kshaya) is removed from the life and replaced by relentless growth
(akshya) and prosperity (vriddhi).

Sanjivani

Shiva gave a rishi called Shukra access to Sanjivani. Sanjivani is sometimes

presented as a herb (Sanjivani-buti) and sometimes as a ritual technique
(Sanjivani-vidya) that enables the dead to come back to life. Shukra took
this knowledge and gave it to the Asuras to help them in their war against
the Devas. Shukra hated the Devas because his mother was beheaded by
Vishnu when she tried to protect the Asuras from the Devas. Vishnu was
cursed for this crime of killing a woman—he was forced to be born on earth
and experience mortality as Ram and as Krishna.
The Asuras, like the Nagas, are residents of Patala, the subterranean
regions. If the Nagas are linked to gems, which they sprout on their hoods,
the Asuras are linked to metal that springs from their bones. The Asuras are
able to replenish the earth constantly. Water sources are renewed, plants
bring forth fresh flowers and fruit year after year. What is the secret?
 The Asuras would not share. They also misused their powers, as we learn
from the story of Atapi and Vatapi, two Asura brothers. Atapi would turn his
brother into a goat, kill him and feed him to guests. Vatapi would then
regenerate in the guest’s belly, tear out his guts and emerge gleefully. This
way, the Asura brothers could feed Brahmins and earn spiritual merit
without having to give them gifts. Their reign of terror was finally stopped
by Agastya, who ate Vatapi, the goat, and digested him before he could
renew himself. He then took the wealth of Atapi and walked away
chuckling, having avenged all the Brahmins killed before him.
To steal the secret of Sanjivani-vidya from the guru of Asuras, the Devas
deploy Kacha, son of their guru Bhrihaspati, who charms Shukra’s
daughter, Devayani. The Asuras grow suspicious and kill Kacha but
Devayani forces her father to revive him. The Asuras then kill Kacha again
and this time, they feed Shukra his flesh. Shukra can no longer resurrect
Kacha without killing himself. But Devayani begs her father to share his
knowledge with his student, so that a resurrected Kacha can then revive
Shukra. Kacha is thus saved but since he emerges from Shukra’s body, he
declares Devayani his sister, breaking her heart, and returns to the realm of
Devas.
The most popular reference to Sanjivani comes from the Ramayana.
Here, it is a herb that grows atop Mount Gandhamadana, which is carried
by Hanuman and brought to Lanka, so that Ram can restore Lakshman,
mortally injured in battle, back to life.

Ayurveda

Dhanvantari, the god of health and healing, emerged from the ocean of milk
carrying Amrita, the nectar of immortality. The grass on which this pot was
kept became immortal, its blades springing back every time they are
plucked. This is the kusha/darba grass that is sacred in Vedic and temple
rituals. It is tied around the ring finger (Pavitra) for purification during
Vedic rituals. It is also offered to Ganesha in temples. Serpents, it is said,
have the power to shed and regenerate skin because they spend all their
lives crawling on this immortal grass. It is Dhanvantari who teaches
Ayurveda to humans. Thus, we find Amrita, Sanjivani and Ayurveda, all
linked through Dhanvantari.
 The Mahabharata tells us how the secret of immortality, of Soma, was
not shared by the Devas. Indra, the rain god, refuses to give it to the
Ashwini twins, sons of Surya, the sun god. Indra tells all the rishis who
know the secret not to share it with anyone. They are warned that their head
will split into a thousand pieces if they do. But the Ashwini twins have a
plan. They replace the head of Rishi Dadhichi with that of a horse. Through
the horse head, they learn the secret of Soma. When the horse head
explodes, they replace it with Dadichi’s original head.
 The Ashwini twins then use this knowledge to restore the youth of Rishi
Chavanya. Chyavana, in turn, teaches humans Ayurveda, which uses the
power of chants, the phases of the moon, various plants, gems and metals to
cure disease and delay death. In the Ramayana, when Hanuman is bringing
the Sanjivani, he also destroys malevolent spirits like Kalanemi and gains
controls over malevolent planets such as Saturn (Shani), a reminder of the
ancient belief that healing is not just a function of herbs but also a function
of occult and astrology.

Naga-mani

The Nagas have Naga-mani, a jewel that old and wise Nagas sprout on their
hoods. This Naga-mani contains the power of healing and can be used to
cure diseases and reverse decay. It can even bring the dead back to life. In
the Mahabharata, when Arjuna is killed by his son, Babruvahana, Arjuna’s
Naga wife Ulupi brings a Naga-mani to restore him to life.

Astrologers, who are experts in Jyotisha-vidya, believe that gems and

metals found under the earth come from the Nagas and the Asuras and
contain the power of Sanjivani, just as the celestial bodies in the sky, the
graha, contain Amrita. These can be used to remove negative forces from
one’s life and bring in positive forces. Negative forces cause decay, gloom
and death. Positive forces enable growth, joy and longevity.

Tapa

In the Puranic stories, which started being composed from the fifth century
onwards, Asuras are shown performing tapasya, churning of tapa or
spiritual fire in the body that compels even Brahma and Shiva to give them
boons: Brahma, because he is their father; Shiva, because he is a guileless
one (Bhole-nath) who does not take sides. The Asuras seek boons to
become immortal, but they know these will not be granted as nothing in
nature is immortal. So, they seek boons to outsmart death. But each time,
the Devas, or Vishnu, take advantage of loopholes to kill the ambitious
Asuras. Yet, the Asuras keep coming back, thanks to Sanjivani, never letting
the Devas enjoy their pleasures in peace.
Hiranyakashipu says he should not be killed by anything human or
animal, at day or at night, inside a dwelling or outside a dwelling, so he is
killed by Vishnu in the form of Narasimha, who is neither man nor animal,
at twilight, which is neither day nor night, on the threshold, which is neither
inside nor outside a dwelling. Taraka asks that he be killed by a baby who
can do battle, and so the Devas get Shiva to father a son who is so powerful
that he needs multiple wombs to develop in. This son is a fully armed
warrior on the sixth day of his life and is able to kill Taraka. Mahisha is
killed by the goddess Durga because he wishes that no creature may kill
him, but uses only the male pronoun, thus neglecting to ask for protection
from women. Ravana is killed by Vishnu, who takes the form of Ram,
because he seeks protection from all creatures of the cosmos except
humans. Victories of the Devas are constantly followed by the appearance
of another Asura. Indra’s throne is constantly wobbling and under threat.
Nothing lasts forever. Neither power, nor prosperity or pleasure. Neither life
nor death.
 The idea of tapasya comes from hermits who withdrew from the world.
But later, these hermits were seen as sorcerers with magical ability to defy
death and even control the world. Tapasya was seen not merely as a
meditative practice but as an esoteric technique to generate tapa or heat
within the body that can be used by tapasvis, or fire-ascetics, to gain
supernatural abilities, such as walking on water, flying in air, changing
shape and size, and even conquering death.
 Tapasya demands celibacy, sense-restraint and yoga practices. Their
enemies are the apsaras, damsels who can enchant and distract the ascetics.
The word ‘apsara’ is derived from water (apsa) and so is the opposite of fire
(tapa). Therefore, the opposition of apsaras and tapasvis seems natural. In
Tantra, apsaras are linked with worldly pleasures and death, and so equated
with dangerous yoginis and dakinis. In the Tantric Age, from around tenth
century ce, the idea arose that loss of semen is the cause of disease,
degeneration and death. Those who could reverse the semen flow, make it
rise up the spine through occult practices, could regenerate the moon inside
the brain (Soma) and attain immortality as well as magical powers.

Rasayana

By the tenth century, Hanuman’s superhuman abilities to fly across the sea
and change his size and shape at will were being explained as the
consequence of his celibacy. We are told that Hanuman’s sweat was so
powerful that a drop of it could get a fish pregnant. Thus was born
Makaradhvaja, half-fish and half-monkey, guardian of Patala, the
subterranean realm of sorcery, regeneration and magic.
This is also when we hear legends of the Nath-jogis of North India and
the Siddhas of South India, who had magical powers known as Siddhi,
including the power to fly in the air, walk on water, change their shape and
size, manifest food and other objects at any time or place. Also, they could
not be killed. All this because they knew special breathing and meditation
practices that reversed the flow of semen up the spine and thus kept
mortality at bay. They could sexually exhaust enchanted women known as
yoginis without losing a drop of their own sexual fluid. This was said to be
the source of their power.
In Nath folklore, Raja Gopichand buries Jalandar-nath alive in a pit of
horse manure, but after several years Jalandar-nath emerges alive, revealing
his power over death. Gorakh-nath kills Mina-nath by striking him to the
ground as a washerman strikes wet clothes against a stone. He hangs the
corpse to dry on a clothesline, and then resurrects him. He does this so
many times that Matsyendra-nath, Mina-nath’s father and Gorakh-nath’s
guru, is shaken out of his stupor and remembers once again how the world
of life, death, pleasure, prosperity and power is all delusion for those who
follow the path of Nath-jogis. By his powers, Revan-nath was able to bring
back to life the seven children of a couple who had died young. These
celibate ascetics are able to do what, until then, only God could do. Through
ritual observance they become Godlike on earth: immortal with magical
powers.

The Nath-jogis were masters of rasayana, or occult alchemy. They

considered mercury to be the semen of Shiva and sulphur to be the
menstrual discharge of Shakti. They had a complex understanding of human
anatomy and physiology. They spoke of concentric layers of the body
(kosha), the vertical nodes of the body (chakra) strung together by channels
(nadi), enlivened by breath (prana). This focus on the body that we find in
Tantra is very different from the focus on the mind that is found in earlier
Upanishadic Buddhist and Jain lore. Here outsmarting death was not an
intellectual idea; it was a tangible experience. Some historians believe
contacts with China may have contributed to the popularity of this idea.
Chiranjeevi

In direct contrast to the idea that death is inevitable and nothing lasts
forever, Hinduism also has the concept of Chiranjeevi, the eight immortal
ones. This idea was probably influenced by the Chinese idea of eight
immortals.
China and India have had a long historical contact by three routes: the
land routes across Central Asia, the mountain passes of Bhutan and Burma
and the sea routes via Southeast Asia. Chinese monks came to India from
around the fifth century ce to translate the original Buddhist scriptures and
must have shared Taoist ideas in exchange. In Taoism, immortality is not a
spiritual concept but a material possibility. One can have a body that does
not die. This is granted by the Jade Emperor of the heavens to a select few
beings, who did something special in their life, thus earning their place
amongst the gods.
 In the Hindu scriptures, we learn of Vyasa and Markandeya, who are
immortal so that they can tell the world stories which contain Vedic
wisdom. There is Parashuram, who is immortal so he can observe how
violence does not end the problems born of ignorance and ego. There is also
Mahabali, who is immortal but allowed to visit his kingdom only once a
year to remind all that prosperity, pleasure and power cannot be eternal.
Kripa and Ashwatthama, in the Mahabharata, are immortal so they can
remind people of the horrors of war. Vibhishana and Hanuman, in the
Ramayana, are immortal to remind people of the story of Ram, the king
who never had a happy family life despite being a great king.

Pati-vrata

While male mendicants could outsmart death by being celibate, women

acquired similar powers by being faithful to husbands, in Hindu lore. Pati-
vrata means one who is faithful to her husband in mind and body. Such a
woman is also called Sati. She is the opposite of the sensuous and unchaste
apsara, the celestial courtesan. Her chastity made her so powerful that she
could defeat death itself.
The earliest such tale linking a wife’s chastity to her ability to overpower
death comes from the Mahabharata. We learn of a princess called Savitri,
who marries a woodcutter called Satyavan. Satyavan is doomed to die a
year after his wedding. But when Yama claims the spirit of her husband,
Savitri does not let go. She follows him until, impressed by her persistence,
Yama offers her a boon, anything but the life of her husband. She then asks
that she have children by her dead husband. Yama agrees before he realises
the implication, that his boon can only manifest if the dead husband is given
life again. Thus, Yama is tricked into letting Satyavan live.
 The story of how Savitri brought her husband back from the land of the
dead is narrated by women who want their husbands to live long and
healthy lives. They ritually express their desire in an annual Vata-Savitri
festival by fasting and tying threads around a banyan tree (akshaya vata),
which is assumed to be immortal.
The idea of a woman being responsible for the life of her husband
became popular in medieval India. This led to the formulation of many
observances (vrata) for women, which would ensure that their husbands
lived a long and healthy life. For example, in northern India, women
observe Karwa Chauth in the autumn season, when they fast all day and
look at the moon and their husband’s face through a sieve before breaking
their fast. In Kerala, women observe Tiruvathira, when they do not eat rice
and remember the story of Shilavati, who was so faithful to her husband
that she had the power to stop the sun from setting to prevent his death. In
Bengal, there are stories of how worshipping the goddess Manasa can help
a woman revive her husband after he has been bitten by a venomous snake.
In Odisha, women worship Mangala to ensure the safety of their husbands
in case of a shipwreck.
In all of these stories, the fidelity of a woman plays a key role in saving
her husband from death. We learn of Vrinda, the wife of an Asura called
Jalandhara, who is so faithful to her husband that the Devas are unable to
defeat him. So, Vishnu takes the form of Jalandhara and visits Vrinda, who
serves him as she would serve her husband. Thus she, without knowing it,
becomes unfaithful and strips her husband of the protection granted by her
chastity, so he can be killed easily. Afterwards, Vrinda curses Vishnu that he
will be worshipped as a fossil-stone, the Shaligrama, and herself turns into a
tulsi shrub. An apologetic Vishnu declares that henceforth, no worship to
him will be complete without the offering of a sprig of tulsi.
Similar stories are to be found in folk versions of the Ramayana.
Ravana’s queens desire the virile Hanuman and so are unable to protect
Ravana with the power of their chastity. By connecting the wife’s fidelity to
her husband’s mortality, a new reason was found to justify the practice of
widow burning. In medieval times, it was declared that a woman who never
thought of another man during marriage would never become a widow. So,
a widow was essentially one who was not faithful to her husband. And the
infidelity need not be physical. Infidelity in thought was bad enough.
Renuka had a momentary lapse of self-control and experienced lust for a
handsome Gandharva, as a result of which her husband, Rishi Jamadagni,
was killed by a king after a dispute.
To prove their fidelity, widows had to burn themselves on their husbands’
funeral pyre. If a woman was truly chaste, it was said, she would not feel
the heat of the fire or the pain of burning to death. She would travel with
her husband to the land of the dead and they would be reborn as a couple
for seven generations.
The belief that a woman’s fidelity kept her husband alive was clearly a
strategy to ensure that women did not seek a relationship outside marriage.
In ancient India, merchants travelled from city to city to conduct their trade.
In Suka Saptati, we hear the story of how, in the absence of one such
merchant, his wife wanted to visit her lovers, but was stopped by a wise
parrot. If a woman’s fidelity kept her husband safe, it also protected her
from widowhood, which was seen as the worst fate for a woman in a
society that did not permit remarriage.

Since widowers could remarry, we do not hear Hindu stories of men

facing death to save their wives, as in the Greek myth of Orpheus seeking
Eurydice. There is one exception, though. The Mahabharata tells the story
of a man called Ruru who begs Yama to return his wife, Pramadvara. Yama
agrees when Ruru agrees to give his wife half his life.

Ayonija
Those who are born of the womb (yoni) are bound to experience death. The
womb is the portal from the land of the dead to the land of the living. But
what about those beings who can be born without passing through the
womb? These are the ayonija, worshipped as divine, as they are not bound
by the rules of death and rebirth. Among them is Sita, who is born of the
earth; Draupadi, who is born of fire; Kartikeya, who is born when Shiva’s
fiery semen is incubated by wind, fire, water, river reeds and stars; and
Ganesha, whose body is moulded from the dirt of his mother’s body and his
elephant head is fixed by his father. These are the divine beings who are
worshipped in temples.

Vishnu chooses to be a yonija, take birth through the womb and

experience birth and death on earth as Ram and Krishna. These are the
avatars, the mortal and limited forms of the immortal infinite. Narayana-
Vishnu, who lives in Vaikuntha, is always young and immortal, but the
Krishna on earth who experiences birth must die, struck by the arrow of a
hunter.
Mortality forces us to think about life, about kindness, compassion and
dharma. Adharma springs from delusions of immortality, the belief that vast
wealth and power will enable us to outsmart death. In the Mahabharata,
Yudhishtira, having faced misfortune, and having confronted the truth of the
forest, when asked by a yaksha, ‘What is the greatest wonder?’ replies,
‘Each day people die. And the rest live as if they are immortal.’ Krishna’s
death described in the Mahabharata draws attention to this truism.

Swayambhu

God, or Bhagavan, is greater than the Devas and the Asuras. God does not
crave immortality or attain immortality. He is Swayambhu, which means
self-created. In the Vedas, God is Purusha. In the Brahmanas, he is
Prajapati. In the Upanishads, he is Atma. In the Puranas, he is Shiva and
Vishnu.
Shiva says he has no ancestors and so does not need children. But Shiva’s
companions are the preta, who await rebirth. Only with a body can they
practise yoga that will help them break the endless cycle of rebirths. So they
need the goddess Shakti, embodiment of nature, to provide them with a
womb through which they can re-inhabit a body and regain life.
 While the idea of swaymbhu speaks of a god who is never born and
never dies, in folk belief all gods die. Only their lifespans are different.
Human lifespan is equal to a blink of Indra. Indra’s lifespan is equal to
Brahma’s blink. Brahma’s lifespan is equal to Vishnu’s blink. Vishnu’s
lifespan is equal to Shiva’s blink. Shiva’s lifespan is equal to Devi’s blink.
No one knows whose blink equals the Devi’s lifespan. Infinity is not
measurable.
OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter 10

Facing Death
In which we learn how death was embraced, not feared, in Hindu lore

Once, there was an Asura called Vritra. To kill him, Indra, king of Devas,
needed a weapon made of the hardest material available on earth. These
could only be the bones of a hermit, who had no attachment for life. He
would give them up voluntarily. A rishi called Dadhichi heard of this and
offered his bones. The withdrawal of his senses from the material world had
made his bones strong. Withdrawal of life from his body was the next step
for him, the ultimate act of detachment. When his spirit had left his body,
the gods gathered his bones and fashioned the weapon called Vajra out of it,
using which Indra killed Vritra. So, did Dadhichi die by suicide? Can he be
called a martyr, one who sacrifices his life for a higher truth? Or did he take
samadhi, the yogic practice of voluntarily pushing one’s spirit out of one’s
body?
While hermits encouraged fasting to death as a means of wiping out
karmic debt, householders considered the act of suicide wrong as it meant
escaping social responsibilities. Yet, we learn of kings, priests, even saints,
not to mention widows, who killed themselves voluntarily and earned the
respect of their community. This ambiguity is evident in the Upanishads.
The Isha Upanishad states, ‘Those who take their lives reach after death the
sunless regions, covered by impenetrable darkness.’ But the Kanthashruti
Upanishad allows wise hermits to die voluntarily, by drowning or fire, or by
inflicting violence on themselves like heroic beings, or vira. Indian folklore
is full of stories of men and women embracing death voluntarily in the form
of retirement, renunciation or driven by the belief in death over dishonour.

Retiring from the Household

When the Asuras seek immortality, they are told that this is one boon that
cannot be granted. Everyone has to die. So, preparing for death became an
important theme in Hindu stories and scriptures. It gave rise to the concept
of ashrama-dharma. Life was divided into four parts: in the first part, one
prepared for the householder’s life; in the second part, one lived the
householder’s life; in the third part, one withdrew from the householder’s
life; and in the fourth part, one focused on preparing for death. The first
phase was called brahmacharya ashrama, then came grihastha ashrama,
vanaprastha ashrama and, finally, sanyasa ashrama.
Vanaprastha ashrama refers to the stage in life when a householder passes
on the mantle of family responsibilities to the next generation and proceeds
to live in the forest (vana). The forest here is metaphorical. It refers to
retirement, an intermediate stage between the life of a householder and a
hermit. One gradually gives up dependence and embraces independence.
One passes on wealth and power to one’s children and knowledge to the
grandchildren. This may sound easy in theory but is difficult to practice.
In the Ramayana, we see Dasharatha wanting to give up his throne and
retire to the forest so that his son, Ram, can be crowned king. He is thus
making way for the next generation. This is dharma. The earth should not
be burdened by more than two generations at a time: the growing
generation and the grown-up generation. The senior must withdraw and
make way for the juniors.
 In the Mahabharata, Shantanu does not want to retire. He wants to marry
a young woman and restart his life as a householder. His ancestor, Yayati,
wants the youth of his children, so that he can keep enjoying life. This is
adharma. For having sacrificed his birthright to please his father, Shantanu’s
son, Devavrata, renamed Bhishma, was given the gift of choice when it
comes to the time of his death. He refused to die until all the problems of
his family are resolved. Krishna got him pinned to the ground, immobilised
by arrows in the battlefield, so that he could not interfere with the fight of
the next generation. Thus, the idea of social death is reinforced. The old
must make way for the young. Even Dhritarashtra and Gandhari, parents of
the Kauravas, are encouraged by Vidura to give up royal comforts after the
death of their children and go to the forest. In the forest, when a fire breaks
out and Dhritarashtra wants to run away, Gandhari advises him to sit and
accept death.

Renouncing Life

The Dharma-shastra recommends renunciation (sanyasa ashrama) after

retirement (vanaprastha ashrama) and the completion of all worldly duties.
This is why many people choose to spend their final days in places like
Haridwar and Varanasi, on the bank of the river Ganga. They hope to die
there and go straight to a higher heaven, bypassing Yama-loka. There are
special hostels made in these pilgrim spots for people waiting to die.
Similar ideas are found in other pilgrim spots too, like Puri, which is called
Swarga-dwar, doorway to paradise.
Some men chose to renounce the world without entering the householder
stage. Adi Shankaracharya, who revived interest in Vedanta in the eighth
century, was one such man. This practice was encouraged by many
monastic orders. Many women chose to be nuns rather than wives.
 In the Mahabharata and the Puranas, we find resistance to this idea.
Hermits such as Jaratkaru, Kardama and Agastya are tormented by
terrifying visions of ancestors hanging upside down from the branch of a
tree over a bottomless pit. They are asked to repay debts to ancestors,
produce children, before renouncing the world completely. So, Jaratkaru
and Kardama take wives and produce children, but walk away from their
families soon afterwards. Agastya, however, chooses to embrace the
householder’s life.
The purpose of renunciation was to withdraw from the quest for wealth,
power and pleasure. The point was to reflect on the world, and on life, with
the intention of outgrowing all needs and fears. This manifested as
indifference to, and detachment from, the world as well as life. It could also
involve prayopavesa, or choosing to die by fasting. The hermit was
supposed to eat only that which the wind brought him.
The human body was seen as having three layers: the social, the physical
and the mental. The social layer comprised wealth, power, estates, titles and
relationships. This was given up through the yogic practice of yama and
niyama. In yama one focused on withdrawing from others and becoming
less dependent, while in niyama one focused on making oneself
independent. Yama involved not hurting anyone (ahimsa), not accumulating
(aparigraha), not stealing (asteya), not lying (satya), not indulging in sexual
activities (brahmacharya) and not judging (daya). Niyama involved being
clean (saucha), content (santosh), restrained (tapas), reflective (swadhyay)
and having faith (Ishwar-pranidhan). These two practices enabled the
householder to become a hermit.
The hermit further isolated himself, by training his body to avoid
dependence on the external world totally, until the state of isolation
(kaivalya) was attained. This was refined in Jain monastic orders giving rise
to the practice known as sallekhana or santhara, where monks fasted to
death after years of systematic and intense training.
 The yogic practice of samadhi enabled the yogi to voluntarily cause his
spirit (atma) to leave his body (deha). Such a hermit who seeks
independence even from bodily urges does not see anyone or anything. He
does not even withdraw from the threat posed by predatory animals and
plants. In art, such a hermit is shown as sitting or standing still, with snakes
slithering around his neck, creepers growing on his limbs, covered by a
termite hill, or with birds making nests on his head. He is no longer the
eater who consumes. He does not fear being eaten, consumed by the world
around him. Thus, he abandons all forms of violence, including the violence
required to feed and protect himself.
In the Ramayana, after fulfilling his duty, Ram enters the river Sarayu
and does not rise again. This act of jala-samadhi was different from suicide.
Suicide was seen as violently withdrawing from the world, exhausted by its
demands, terrified of the pressures, refusing to fulfil social obligations or
face the karmic consequences of past actions. Samadhi was seen as
voluntarily getting the spirit to leave the physical body after completing all
of one’s social duties. Other forms of samadhi included jumping into fire, or
simply walking into the forest and giving up food. In the Mahabharata, this
is what the Pandavas do when they pass on their kingdom to Parikshit and
walk up the mountains in their old age.
About 2,300 years ago, according to folklore, Emperor Chandragupta
Maurya lost all interest in the material world during a time of drought. He
became a monk and fasted to death. His advisor, Chanakya, hoped to
continue his role but Chandragupta’s son, Bindusara, did not trust him.
Realising that he was no longer valued, and that his social responsibilities
were over, Chanakya chose to smoke himself to death by sitting on a pile of
burning wood.
Similarly, around 1,300 years ago, Vedanta scholar Kumaril Bhatta
decided to withdraw from life by seating himself on a pile of slowly
burning wood at the confluence of the Ganga and the Yamuna. Earlier,
when his Buddhist teacher had made fun of Vedic rituals, he had decided to
jump off a cliff to prove the power of the Vedas. He survived the fall but
lost vision in one eye. He realised then that his faith in the Vedas was
conditional and faulty, and that he had probably outlived his utility. His
ritualistic approach to the Vedas (Mimansa) was inadequate. He had to
make way for a new teacher (Adi Shankara) who would bring a better
understanding of the Vedas through intuition and intellectual
analysis (Vedanta).

Death Before Dishonour

Tamil Sangam literature, which is nearly 2,000 years old, tells us of kings
who chose to sit facing north, and fast unto death when defeated in battle or
rejected by their people, to uphold their honour in death rather than live on
in disgrace. This practice of facing north and dying was called Vatakkiruttal
and descriptions of it can be found in many songs in the Purananuru.
Sometimes, those loyal to the king would join them. For instance, after the
death of King Vel Pari in battle, his poet-friend Kapilar gave up his life in
this manner.
In another account, King Kopperuncholan’s sons fight him for the throne,
and even raise an army against him. As the king prepares for battle, his
advisors ask him if it is worth going to war. ‘If you lose, they will rejoice in
your defeat. If you win, who will you leave your kingdom to? You will have
no heirs.’ The king then decides to face north and fast unto death. He invites
his favourite poets to die with him. ‘Fetch the poet who lives in the south. I
cannot die without him. He who stayed away from me in fortune will surely
join me in misfortune.’ Some of the poets arrive too late. ‘The world praised
you when you gave them shade. But you could not complete your reign.
You are reduced to a small space, an undecaying stone. The other stones
here will give me space. I come to them with an old love, the one that holds
me to them as life to a body.’ There were other poets who were heartbroken
that they had not been invited. ‘On the river-island, in spotted shade, you
sit, and your body shrivels. Are you angry with me, warrior, that you ask
others to join you here? Not me.’
 The idea of death before dishonour is a common theme in warrior
communities. The more violent stories are those from medieval Rajput
communities, which inform us about the practice of Jauhar, or women
burning themselves to death to avoid capture by enemies. These women
were worshipped as goddesses. There are also stories of men who killed
themselves before the image of a god, when defeat seemed inevitable.
Anything was preferable to life in disgrace.
In one legend linked with the king of Ranthambore, a Rajput king called
Hammir gives shelter to a soldier who has incurred the wrath of a Delhi
Sultan. This angers the Delhi Sultan, who attacks the king’s fort with a
massive army. Even after many wars, and losing many soldiers, when
defeat appears inevitable, the king refuses to break his promise to the
soldier and chooses to die instead. The royal women are told to immolate
themselves. His minister then sacrifices nine elephants to Shiva-Bhairava to
remind all of how the sacrifice of Hammir must be seen as Ravana
sacrificing his ten heads to Shiva. Thus, his honourable death was
transformed into an act of devotion.

Death as Devotion

Stone sculptures found in Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil

Nadu, from the Chola to the Vijayanagar period (from the fifth to the
fifteenth century), show images of young men who offered their own head
or cut open their guts to expose the entrails, as an act of courage and
devotion in honour of a king or a god. This brought them immortality and
eternal fame. The families of these men were given land in their memory,
prompting many such sacrifices. And while kings gave land to the men who
gave up their bodies to display loyalty, the gods gave them access to secret
knowledge.
The legendary king Vikramaditya cut off his head and offered it to the
goddess Kali, to earn her love and blessings. She was so pleased that she
resurrected him and revealed to him the Tantric secrets of life, death and
longevity. He understood that he could double the duration of his rule if he
spent half his life as a householder and half as a hermit. So Vikramaditya
shared his kingdom with his brother, Bhartrihari, who also did the same.
While one brother lived as a hermit, the other was householder-king. By
alternating their rule, the two brothers governed their kingdom for a very
long time. This longevity was also linked to celibacy. As hermits, they
stayed away from sensual pleasures. As householder-kings, they enjoyed
sensual pleasures. As hermits, they gathered power. As householders, they
expended power. This knowledge came to Vikramaditya through self-
sacrifice.
 While there are hero-stones that commemorate warriors who have laid
down their lives to protect people, land or cattle, there are also memorials to
heroes who offered their head, perhaps symbolically, to a god or a king, to
express loyalty and devotion, or to receive honour and fame. The tenth-
century Tamil ballad Kalingattuparani states, ‘Like the roaring sound of
ocean waves, the shouts of heroes offering their heads in return for the
bestowal of boons were echoing all over the area.’
In Tamil Nadu’s Terukuttu performances of the Mahabharata, Aravan,
Arjuna’s son by Ulupi, is asked to offer himself as a human sacrifice to the
goddess Kali to ensure victory for his father. He does this, but only after he
is given a wife. For he wishes to experience conjugal pleasure at least once
before he dies. He also wants someone to truly mourn him when he is gone.
Since no woman wants to marry a man doomed to die at sunrise, Krishna
turns into the damsel Mohini and marries him. They spend the night as
husband and wife, and in the morning, she mourns his sacrifice as his
widow.
Atop many Hindu temples one sees the image of a severed head. Similar
images are found on arches placed behind images of deities. This head is
called kirti-mukha, the head of glory. Kirti-mukha was a Shiva-gana, or
follower of Shiva, who was very hungry but refused to eat others and so
decided to eat his own body. To live, he chose to consume himself rather
than consume others. His offering of oneself to oneself was the ultimate act
of devotion. His head atop temples and arches, often with tongue sticking
out and baring fangs, is to remind all devotees that as long as they consume
others, their devotion is an act of self-delusion.

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 Chapter 11

Ending Death
In which we learn how Hindus imagined liberation from the wheel of
rebirths

Parikshit was bitten by a snake and was doomed to die in a week’s time. He
wondered what was the point of a life cut so prematurely. Shuka-muni, the
parrot-headed son of Vyasa, came to the dying king and told him the story
of Krishna, who was God-on-earth. Krishna also had to die, accidentally
shot by the poison-tipped arrow of a hunter. Before dying, he had given the
wisdom of life and death to Uddhava, his old friend. He spoke of two
possibilities after death: rebirth or liberation from rebirths. The idea of
eternal afterlife based on God’s judgment is alien to Hindu thought.
Moksha, or liberation from rebirths, involves oblivion (nirvana) of the
self in Buddhism, and isolation (kaivalya) of the self in Jainism; in
Hinduism it involves union (yoga) of the self with God or the cosmic spirit.
In Vedanta, the cosmic spirit is referred to as the impersonal ‘Param-atma’,
‘Brahman’ or ‘Purusha’. With the rise of theism, words like Bhagavan and
Ishwar began to be used instead, to make the cosmic spirit appear more
sentient, sensitive and compassionate.
 In bhakti literature, the cosmic spirit is embodied as Shiva, Vishnu or the
Goddess. So, liberation is visualised as reaching the abode of Shiva, Vishnu
or the Goddess, and staying there permanently. The Garuda Purana focuses
on devotion to Vishnu, but also refers to ideas from the Upanishads and the
Dharma-shastra that predate theism. Union with the divine, in the Hindu
scheme of things, is achieved in three ways:

1. Gyan-marga: the intellectual path of the hermit

2. Karma-marga: the practical path of the householder
3. Bhakti-marga: the emotional path of the devotee

The Hermit’s Knowing

In the Gita, which is a dialogue in the epic Mahabharata, Krishna speaks of

the atma which never dies. In Vedanta literature, atma is described as a
being without form (nirakar), shape (nirupa), qualities (nirguna) or divisions
(akhand), unbound by time (akaal), eternal (nitya) and tranquil (sadananda),
and a witness to life (sakshi). When Krishna reveals his cosmic form, with
infinite heads and infinite limbs, that consumes and generates infinite
worlds, one sees that there are no boundaries, divisions or hierarchies. He
shows us how the limitless Narayana is no different from the limited
Krishna. He knows this, but Arjuna has forgotten. Krishna tells Arjuna that
his insecurities and doubts stem from this forgetfulness. And the
forgetfulness stems from attachment. He needs to break the vicious cycle of
forgetfulness and attachment.
We feel we are alone in the world. We need nourishment (anna) and
security (abhaya). We crave pleasure (sukkha) and shun pain (dukkha). We
get angry and frustrated when we do not get what we seek, jealous when
others have what we want. We fight to get what we want and cling to what
we gather. Ignorance entraps us further in the wheel of rebirths. It keeps
making us crave for things, regret failure and fear loss. The wise neither
yearn nor regret. Neither do they fear. They enjoy life and accept death
without clinging to anything or anyone.
Most of us spend our lives accumulating wealth, property, power, estates,
titles, relationships, even knowledge. This creates a new body—a cultural
body—around our natural body, made of all that we possess. We do not like
to share this cultural body. Before we die, we ensure that all that we possess
goes to those we consider as ours. And when we die, our ghost leaves our
body. But this ghost is not free. It is trapped by debts; it has to repay and
reclaim. For it has spent its lifetime consuming and clinging. These debts
are the karmic burden that eclipses the jivaatma, like covering a crystal with
dust and dirt. These debts drown us in ignorance. They turn the jiva-atma
into preta.
The wise know that ignorance as well as wisdom are embodied in the
flesh. Our flesh can take many forms: that of trees, animals, birds and
fishes. Our flesh obscures our access to wisdom, like the eclipse blocks the
sun. In ignorance, we keep discarding old bodies and gaining new bodies,
again and again and again. After eighty-four hundred thousand (84,00,000)
births, we obtain the human flesh which has the wherewithal to discover
that embodied wisdom. Unfortunately, it is distracted by craving, like a fish
distracted by the meat on the sharp end of a fisherman’s hook.
 The human body is a special gift. It contains everything that can help us
break free from the wheel of rebirths. We must nourish it and protect it from
disease. We cannot stop it from ageing, and it will experience accidents and
ailments from time to time. But as long as we are healthy, we must seek the
wisdom embodied within it diligently and before it is too late. Do not wait
till old age and the moments before death to think about wisdom, like that
man who digs a well, looking for water, when his house is burning.
No one knows when they will die. Yet, enchanted by joys and trapped in
miseries, they rarely think about wisdom. The wealthy, the healthy, the
fortunate forget how quickly things can turn bad. The poor, the unfortunate,
the diseased yearn for good times and contemplate no further. Drunk on the
delusions of joy and sorrow, no one thinks about the hereafter. A life
spanning one hundred years is hardly enough time. Half of it is lost
sleeping. Half of our waking hours are overtaken by stress, ailments and
conflicts, and the rest in anxieties and ambitions. Life is like sea foam.
Fragile. Momentary. But no one thinks about imminent death. With time,
even Mount Meru withers away, the unbaked pot dissolves in water.
Death claims family and friends and, continuously, relentlessly, it gnaws
at the living, yet we are busy with our tasks, fighting for things, clinging to
things, mourning the loss of things. We have been enchanted by the magic
of thirst, hunger, sensory delights, emotional yearnings, attractions and
revulsions. The world is forever changing, it is the root of all sorrow, yet we
do not pause to reflect upon it. A man in jail is eventually released, but not a
man entrapped by social relationships. All creatures crave food, sex,
comfort, power and sleep. But if that is all man craves, then how is he
different from bird, beast or tree? What differentiates humans is knowledge
about death and freedom, embedded within and awaiting discovery. Foolish
is the man who is driven by the call of nature every morning, by hunger and
thirst every day, by pleasure and sleep every night. The wise cultivate
detachment. To cultivate detachment, one needs to surround oneself with
people who are refined, those whose eyes can separate milk from water, like
the mythical goose.
 We should be asking ourselves why we use words like ‘mine’ and ‘not
mine’ in our daily lives. Where does this division come from? The ‘mine’
binds us, the ‘not mine’ liberates us. The more we pursue ‘mine’, the more
we fetter ourselves, fill ourselves with anxiety and entrap ourselves with
fleeting sensory experiences. From this idea of ‘mine’ comes restlessness,
pride, contempt, rage, jealousy, hatred. Those who let go are able to calm
down, see the truth and are able to understand death, as well as life, with
grace and dignity. For nothing belongs to anyone. All that is grabbed will be
left behind. All that is remembered will be forgotten.
In gyan-marga, one appreciates the pull of the sense-horses and the mind-
chariot, and recognises the self within that gives value to all the things it
consumes while creating boundaries and hierarchies, as well as concepts
such as mine and not mine, which, in turn, result in attachment, revulsion
and fear of death. This is what stops us from being generous with words,
with actions, with wealth, which makes us cling to things and to thoughts,
even to breath. But those who taste the spiritual nectar are no longer
interested in material feasts. They stop craving and regretting, envying and
denying. They share everything freely. They let go of everything
effortlessly.
When one breaks free from attachment, judgement, liking and disliking,
loving and hating, when one is truly generous, materially and emotionally,
one can sit anywhere and be liberated enough to welcome death without
fear. There is no yearning for paradise or fear of hell, no aspiration or terror,
just peace. This is moksha, according to the Garuda Purana.

The Householder’s Doing

In the Garuda Purana, Vishnu tells Garuda that those who wish to end
repeated births and repeated deaths need to find the truly refined, the
authentic. Avoid the imposter who performs rituals, who does not see the
big picture. Avoid those who are obsessed with ceremonies but do not
appreciate the meaning, who fast and torture the body but fail to refine the
mind. Avoid those who wear animal skin, mat their hair, smear their body
with ash and mouth Vedic axioms while enjoying the temporary pleasures
of the material world, competing with other ascetics for fame and glory.
Donkeys walk around naked, but that does not make them wise; walking
naked does not make you wise. Dogs roll on ash, but that does not make
them wise; smearing your body with ash does not make you wise. Deer eat
grass, but that does not make them wise; eating grass does not make you
wise. Fish live in the Ganga, but that does not make them wise; merely
living next to the Ganga does not make you wise. Rituals and practices are
not ends in themselves. They simply increase the probability of insight into
wisdom.
Simply memorising the Vedas, studying the Shastras, chanting hymns
and sacred texts does not make anyone wise. Knowledge is not enough.
Observe those who are learned in poetry, or the best of grammarians and
logicians, and notice the anxiety that consumes them. They are not wise.
Those who argue viciously over the truth do not know the truth, just as a
spoon carrying honey does not know what sweetness is. Memorisation does
not grant you wisdom, just as talking about lamps does not take away the
darkness. Knowledge is infinite and it will take infinite lifetimes to gather
all knowledge. But insight comes in a flash, a moment, if one is keen. And
once that insight is obtained, there is no need for scriptures or rituals or
performance. They are like stalks of grass after the grain has been threshed.
Wisdom is the realisation that you are not alone in the world. The world
is neither the prey that you crave nor the predator that you fear. You too are
prey for someone else, and also a predator. The jiva-atma (self ) thus
empathises with the para-atma (the other), recognises how the other thinks
and feels in hunger, fear and ignorance. Everything that lives in this world
is both eater and eaten. Trees, plants, animals, humans, even gods and
demons, sages and sorcerers, ghosts and ancestors. Alone, they feel like
victims, fear villains and seek heroes. But when they realise that they are
not alone, that there is no separation between self and other, that everyone is
part of an ecosystem, the story changes. Instead of eating and being eaten,
they strive to feed and be fed.
 Eaters and eaten establish samsara, which is nature. Culture is about the
feeders and the fed, and this is established through samskara, or rites of
passage. The sound ‘ka’ distinguishes samsara (nature) from samskara
(cultural activities). In Hindu funeral rituals, the mashed rice balls for the
dead are offered to crows to eat. Why crows? Many explanations are
offered. One states that crows make the sound ‘ka’, which in Sanskrit is the
sound of interrogation. For example, in Hindi, ‘ka’ gives rise to words for
what (kya), when (kab), where (kahan), how (kaise) and why (kyon). An
examined life is an indicator of how cultured we are.
All organisms act to survive. But humans know that they live in an
ecosystem of debt. Repayment of what we owe others liberates us. In
samskara, you focus on the hunger and fear of others.

You produce children to help ancestors. This begins with garbha-dana

samskara for conception and ends with nama-karana samskara for
naming the child.
You feed children until they can feed themselves. This is marked by
anna-prasanna samskara when you feed the child, the chudakarma
samskara when you cut their hair and the karna-bheda samskara when
you pierce their ears, and thus transform them from beasts to humans.
You ensure that your children, like you, do their duty (sva-dharma)
based on their lineage (varna-dharma) and stage of life
(ashramadharma), adequately modified in calamitous times (apad-
dharma).
You teach your children that they, like you, exist for the generation as
providers of knowledge (brahmana), security (kshatriya), goods
(vaishya) and services (shudra). You teach them the value of exchange
(yagna) and generosity (daan).
You educate children to prepare them for the world. This is
brahmacharya ashrama, which begins with vidya-arambha samskara
and continues with the upanayana samskara, when the child is ready to
appreciate how he is part of a co-dependent ecosystem of family,
friends, strangers, culture, nature, ghosts and ancestors.
 You get children married to help them repay their debts to ancestors, to
family, culture and nature. This is grihastha-ashrama, which begins
with vivaha samskara.
You withdraw from the world when your children are ready. This is
vanaprastha ashrama.
You withdraw from life when you are ready. This is sanyasa ashrama.
When you die, you hope your family will perform the antyeshti and the
shradh, to help your ghost make its journey to Pitr-loka.

By engaging with the other (para-atma), you realise the infinite (param-
atma). And by realising the infinite, you realise the delusion (maya) of
boundaries, divisions and hierarchies. You do not see the other merely as
opportunity or threat, to be consumed or feared. You realise that ultimately
you are just like everything and everyone else—food.

The Devotee’s Feeling

As Vedic Hinduism transformed into Puranic Hinduism from 1000 bce to

500 ce, concepts such as nirguna-brahman (divine without form), the
saguna-brahman (divine with form) and avatar (divine on earth) emerged.
The abstract was thus made concrete. The limitless was made limited. The
mysterious divine became accessible. The accessible divine took the form
of icons that were enshrined in temples. These were approached as a man
approaches a leader or teacher or master. This submission to authority was
popular with kings and encouraged by them and became widespread with
the rise of states.
In Hindu temples, gods were increasingly shown engaged with the
material world and solving material problems: there was Shiva, who
married Shakti and descended from Kailasa to serve as sheriff (kotwal) of
Kashi; there was the four-armed Vishnu, who became the two-armed Ram
and Krishna of Ayodhya and Mathura who had to contend with tyrants like
Ravana and Jarasandha; and there was Durga, the daughter of Brahma, the
sister of Vishnu and the wife of Shiva, who fought enemies in battle and fed
the hungry at home.
 The Puranas spoke of eternal heavens such as Kailasa, the abode of
Shiva, and Vaikuntha, the abode of Vishnu. Looking at God’s image
(darshan), hearing their stories (sravana), thinking about them (smarana)
and adoring them through ritual (puja-archana-upasana) was enough to
break the cycle of rebirths.
In bhakti literature, the dead do not have to suffer the horrors of Yama-
loka or the bleakness of Pitr-loka. If they worship Shiva, they will land up
in Kailasa, where there is no hunger. If they worship Vishnu, they will reach
Vaikuntha, on the ocean of milk. If they worship Krishna, they will end up
in Go-loka, where Krishna plays his flute eternally under the wish-fulfilling
tree, surrounded by wish-fulfilling cows. This is the bhakti-marga, or path
of devotion.
Devotees of Shiva told stories of how Markandeya was saved from
Yama’s noose by Shiva himself when he clung to the Shiva-linga like a
baby monkey clinging to his mother for safety. They spoke of how a thief
landed up in Kailasa because, while escaping from some guards, he climbed
a bilva tree and accidentally caused the leaves, much loved by Shiva, to fall
on a Shiva-linga.
Devotees of Vishnu told stories of how Ajamila, the gambler and
scoundrel, was saved from Yama’s messengers by Vishnu’s messengers
because he called out his son’s name before dying. This name, Narayana,
happened to be Vishnu’s too. Ajamila is often compared to a lost
irresponsible kitten carefully taken to safety by the mother cat. Vishnu
devotees also narrated the story of how Vishnu answered the prayers of his
devotee, the elephant-king Gajendra, and rescued him from the jaws of a
crocodile in a lotus pond, a metaphor for how prayer liberates us from the
sensory trap of materialism.

In many parts of India, devotees preferred the divine embodied in a

human form rather than in images and icons. For them, a charismatic guru
became the master, a medium for God. Unlike the gurus of Vedic times,
who were simply teachers and instructors, a new type of guru became
prominent in India after the tenth century. These gurus were seen as
embodiments of the divine, fountainheads of energy, to be adored and
worshipped. The idea of submission to a doctrine was perhaps influenced
by the rising popularity of the concept of Almighty, all-merciful God and
God’s messenger that was reaching India through Christian and Muslim
traders, warlords and missionaries. Today, devotees sing chants that place a
guru above teachers, above gods, above parents. Devotees give their wealth
to the guru, outsource all decisions to the guru, surrender totally to the
whims of the guru. This feels like liberation.

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 Conclusion
In which we learn why the
Hindu world view does not have the concept of Judgement Day

When people die, most people around the world say RIP, which is short for
Rest in Peace. This is based on the belief that death is a destination, the end,
no moving forward or going back. Lately, many Hindus on social media
have given this a Sanskrit spin, saying ‘Om Shanti’, which is an invocation
to peace. This takes away the restlessness and dynamism of the Hindu
belief in the afterlife, which is based on the movement of the disembodied
ghost from the land of the living to the land of the dead, and its return at the
time of rebirth. By feeding the dead, we help the ghost travel in peace, and
remind ourselves of hunger, that primal force that drives us to live each day.
Travel in Peace, or TIP, would be a more appropriate Hindu acronym.
The resting in RIP occurs in purgatory, the time between the end of an
individual’s life and the end of the world itself, after which all souls will be
judged simultaneously by God. This grand climax is a part of the Christian
and Islamic eschatology, that is, myths related to the end. Here the belief is
that we live only one life. So, we are expected to live as per God’s laws, as
revealed by God’s messengers or prophets. After death, we wait until
Judgement Day (‘Qayamat’ in Persian) when God decides our fate based on
our conduct. The wait is long for the wicked and short for the good. Those
who have lived in law and love (halal) will go to Heaven (Jannat); the rest,
who disregarded law and love (haram), will be cast into Hell (Jahannum).
Those who repent may be shown mercy.
Hindu mythology is very different. There is no waiting in purgatory.
There is no Judgement Day. Life, death and rebirth is governed by hunger
(kama) and its consequences (karma). Hunger makes us eat. Karma ensures
that the eater gets eaten. Humans seek to escape the fate of being eaten by
feeding others and earning merit. Those who have not fed others when alive
suffer and starve in Naraka after death. Those who have fed others when
alive go to Swarga and are fed by the gods. Those who are free of debt and
immersed in the divine rise to a higher heaven beyond the wheel of rebirths.
 The difference in how Hindus look at death impacts how Hindus look at
life:

Evil, or absence of the divine, is a word that cannot be translated into

any Indian language. The closest we get is wicked or evil. There is no
concept of the Devil, or demon. The Asuras and Rakshasas are sons of
Brahma, just like the Devas. They may be insecure and nasty, but no
one is evil. Everyone is part of God, whose inclusive cosmic form is
shown to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita.
Sin, or the breaking of God’s law, is often translated as paap in Indian
languages. But the concept of punya, or positive karma, does not have
an equivalent in English or Arabic. Either you follow the rules (halal)
or you do not (haram). The approach is binary. The Hindu approach is
a number line. The more paap you do, the more negatives you
accumulate. The more punya you do, the more positives you
accumulate. The number zero is the point that grants liberation from
possibilities of rebirth, from all possible heavens and hells.
The Hindu idea of rebirth implies that no one is born with a clean slate.
At birth we carry the burden of past lives, and in death we carry
forward the burdens of the current life. This explains inequality and
diversity in the world. We cannot simply blame the rich and the
powerful; we have to take responsibility too. Generosity is not the
burden only of the rich. That we have a human birth makes us elite and
privileged, with the wherewithal to discover the divine.
When you live once, the value of your life is the sum total of
achievements as the denominator of your life is one. But when you live
infinite lives, the denominator of your life is infinity and so the value
of your life, no matter what you do, is zero.
 The Middle East, which includes Arabia, Persia, Mesopotamia and
Egypt, is the region that gave rise to the one-life mythology that went on to
influence Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The Indian subcontinent is where
the idea of rebirth emerged, as a part of Jainism, Buddhism and Hinduism.
India and the Middle East have had trading relations since Harappan times.
Both were aware of the concept of debt. Middle Eastern stories spoke of
debts accumulated in a single life; this gave rise to the idea of sin. Indian
myths spoke of debts accumulated in multiple lives; this gave rise to the
idea of karma. Different stories of death shaped understandings of kindness
and compassion, fairness and justice in different cultures. Why did humans
create these stories?
Nature does not expect any animal or tree to be kind or compassionate,
fair or just. Humans may attribute these qualities to nature through fables,
but nature appears indifferent, ruthless, with no favourites. Balance in
nature happens on a wider scale, at a species level, not at an individual
level. Nature is full of predators and prey, not villains or victims.
Everything in nature has an expiry date. But humans have imagination—
and that creates ideas about the future, about never dying, about endlessly
returning. This imagination propels us towards culture, where we generate
food for ourselves, and towards civilisation where we exchange food with
others. With production and exchange come the concepts of fairness and
justice. Am I being treated the same as others? Am I getting what is due?
The need to be treated fairly and justly is a cultural need, which is
expressed and enforced through myths. For example, eagles eating serpents
is no crime in nature, but in culture, we want to see one as the victim and
the other as villain. So, in the story of Garuda, the Nagas are called
tricksters and enslavers of birds, transforming Garuda’s need to eat them
into an act of justice. When humans kill humans, we need a justification to
differentiate ourselves from beasts. We need to clarify that those who kill
are heroes and those who are killed are villains, savages and monsters,
threats to culture, civilisation, order or progress.
But stories about death need to be supernatural, and have forces that are
not limited by death. That is why humans have always composed stories
about stern judges and strict accountants, as well as wise and compassionate
gods in the afterlife, who are themselves not subject to death. We find these
in all cultures.

Ancient Egyptians spoke of hearts being weighed against the feather of

justice by the dog-headed Anubis.
Ancient Greeks spoke of meaningless repetitive punishments in
Tartarus for those who angered the gods.
Vikings spoke of those who died bravely in battle and were taken to
the Halls of Valhalla, by Valkyries, to dine with and fight beside the
gods.
Zoroastrians spoke of a bridge across the fires of hell that becomes
narrower for the wicked and wider for the good.
Jewish, Christian and Islamic lore spoke of the almighty, merciful God
as the ultimate judge.
Hindus spoke of tortures in Naraka that await those who follow
adharma, the joys of Swarga for those who follow dharma and a higher
 heaven for those who follow the path of yoga, when given a second
chance of life through rebirth.

Many argue that all these fictions are designed to exploit, that Egyptian
pyramids and Mesopotamian tombs enabled the powerful to enslave the
peasants, that Hindu funeral rites were designed to benefit Brahmin
communities while stripping the Chandala of dignity, that Judgement Day
was simply meant to legitimise warfare, enforce standardisation and wipe
out creativity. They believe progress demands a rejection of all stories and
the creation of impersonal institutions that enable a rational redistribution of
material wealth and power.

Unfortunately, such a world exists only in the imagination: a world where

humans are so rational that they are kind and generous of their own
volition. Modern ‘rational’ myths of revolution and nation-state offer the
delusion of a happily ever after, sometime in the future, provided everyone
is in agreement. So, the present is spent arguing, debating and fighting.
Rabid rationalists are now realising how excessive cynicism and the
rejection of myths only lead to anarchy. Hegemony, or the use of stories to
gain compliance through belief rather than violence, is a necessary tool of
culture and civilisation.
 An objective scientific study of the vast expanse of the cosmos leaves us
feeling stripped of value. We realise we do not matter in the grand scheme
of things. Nature does not treat humans any different from a plant or an
animal simply because we designed a radical technology or amassed vast
amounts of wealth or enslaved entire continents. The most talented and
desirable person in the world is no different from a shrub in the forest that is
infested with termites. Everyone has an expiry date. No one notices their
disappearance. But such a perspective is not good for one’s mental health. It
leads to depression or, even worse, sociopathy!
The subjective self yearns for value, meaning and purpose. Self-help
gurus encourage the elite to leave behind a legacy. This feels ridiculous
when we realise that, as a species, humans have existed for over 3,00,000
years. We began farming only 10,000 years ago, and no one remembers the
first farmer. No one remembers the tree that bore the sweet mango we ate
earlier in the day. We do not even remember what we ate for our last meal,
let alone the person who cooked it. But the horror of being forgotten
terrifies us. We want to stop thinking, immerse ourselves in tasks. Or we
surrender to religious books and spiritual gurus who think for us, tell us
what to do, and grant us peace in exchange for obedience.
Meaning gives us pleasure. Meaninglessness causes pain. While there is a
natural motivation to seek pleasure and shun pain, there is no natural
motivation to be just, fair, caring or compassionate. It requires effort to
empathise with others, value other people’s beliefs, behaviour, person and
property. Myths about death and the afterlife do precisely that. They are
shortcuts: simple cultural tools to nudge humans towards empathy, make
them care for others through an unconscious reflex rather than a thought-
through and rational response.
Humans need stories to cope with life. We need to accept this. We also
need to accept that different cultures have different stories. Conflict takes
place when one story is privileged over others, when RIP is assumed to be
more real than TIP. No scientist, no mystic, no philosopher knows what
really happens after we die. But to live enthusiastically, we need a story
about death. And to be at peace, we must accept that others may not agree
with our story because they have a story of their own.
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Glossary
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Pandey, R., Hindu Samskaras: Socio-Religious Study of the Hindu

Sacraments. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishing House, 1969.

Saraswati, Swami Dayanand, translation by Vaidyanath Shastri. The

Sanskar Vidhi. Sarvadeshik Arya Pratinidhi Sabha: New Delhi, 1985.

Sayers, M.R., Feeding the Dead: Ancestor Worship in Ancient India. New
York: Oxford University Press, 2013.
Shastri, Dakshina Ranjan. Origin and Development of the Rituals of
Ancestor Worship in India. Bookland Private: Calcutta, 1963.

Storm, Mary. Head and Heart: Valour and Self-Sacrifice in the Art of India.
Routledge: New Delhi, 2013.

Walker, Benjamin. Hindu World, An Encyclopedic Survey of Hinduism (2

volumes). New Delhi: Indus, 1968.

Walls, J.L. (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Eschatology. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2008.

Wilkins, W.J., Hindu Mythology. New Delhi: Rupa Publications, 1997.

Wood, E. and S.V. Subrahmanyam, The Garuda Purana. New York: AMS
Press, 1974.

Zimmer, Heinrich, Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization. Delhi:
Motilal Banarsidass, 1990.

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 Bibliography
Dongier, W., Hindu Myths: A Sourcebook Translated from the Sanskrit.
New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1975.

——, Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology. New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass

Publishing House, 1988.

——, The Rig Veda: An Anthology. New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1994.

Flood, Gavin, An Introduction to Hinduism. New Delhi: Cambridge

University Press, 1998.

Gardiner, E., Hindu Hell: Visions, Tours and Descriptions of the Infernal
Otherworld, second edition. New York: Italica Press, 2013.

Hart, George L. and Hank Heifetz (trs), The Four Hundred Songs of War
and Wisdom: An Anthology of Poems from Classical Tamil, the
Purananuru, New York: Columbia University Press, 2002.

Kinsley, David, Hindu Goddesses: Visions of the Divine Feminine in the

Hindu Religious Tradition. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishing House,
1987.

Knipe K.M. (ed.), The Hindu Rite of Entry into Heaven and Other Essays
on Death and Ancestors in Hinduism. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass
Publishing House, 2019.

Mani, Vettam, Puranic Encyclopaedia: A Comprehensive Dictionary with

Special Reference to the Epic and Puranic Literature. Delhi: Motilal
Banarsidass Publishing House, 1996.

Olivelle, P. and D.R. David, Jr (eds), The Oxford History of Hinduism:

Hindu Law. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2018.
Pandey, R., Hindu Samskaras: Socio-Religious Study of the Hindu
Sacraments. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishing House, 1969.

Saraswati, Swami Dayanand, translation by Vaidyanath Shastri. The

Sanskar Vidhi. Sarvadeshik Arya Pratinidhi Sabha: New Delhi, 1985.

Sayers, M.R., Feeding the Dead: Ancestor Worship in Ancient India. New
York: Oxford University Press, 2013.

Shastri, Dakshina Ranjan. Origin and Development of the Rituals of

Ancestor Worship in India. Bookland Private: Calcutta, 1963.

Storm, Mary. Head and Heart: Valour and Self-Sacrifice in the Art of India.
Routledge: New Delhi, 2013.

Walker, Benjamin. Hindu World, An Encyclopedic Survey of Hinduism (2

volumes). New Delhi: Indus, 1968.

Walls, J.L. (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Eschatology. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2008.

Wilkins, W.J., Hindu Mythology. New Delhi: Rupa Publications, 1997.

Wood, E. and S.V. Subrahmanyam, The Garuda Purana. New York: AMS
Press, 1974.

Zimmer, Heinrich, Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization. Delhi:
Motilal Banarsidass, 1990.

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 Acknowledgements
To Shri Devdutt Chhatre, Vedic ritual specialist from Pune, who has helped
clarify many doubts.

To Smt. Seema Sontakke, for researching and translating passages from the
Samhitas and Brahmana literature.

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 Other titles by

Devdutt Pattanaik
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