Funeral rites
event · 2 works · 3 mentions · 6 anchored passages
funeral · burial · cremation · funeral rite · laying-out of the corpse · the tomb
in the texts
Laws
The rites owed to the dead, discussed both as a filial duty and as an example of the need for definite legal standards.
When parents die, the most modest funeral rites are the best, whereby the son neither exceeds the accustomed pomp, nor falls short of what his forefathers paid to their sires;
but he must always publish one single statement about one matter.
—Either to ordain or to prohibit weeping for the dead is unseemly, but we shall forbid loud mourning and lamentation outside the house, and we shall prohibit the carrying out of the dead on to the open roads and making lamentation while he is borne through the streets, and the funeral party must be outside the city-bounds before day-break.
Rigveda
The sequence of cremating the body with Agni, releasing it to the Fathers, and burying/covering it in the earth.
When thou hast made him done [cooked], O Jātavedas, then send him forth to the Fathers.
In the westward days they [the funeral priests] have laid me aside like a leaf.
O Agni, release him back again to the Fathers — he who, offered to thee, wanders with svadhā-offerings.