Ancestors

I have brought milk from the ancestors;

I have brought vigor from the ancestors;

Neither the gods nor the Pitṛs nor mortals have attained unto him.

Crying again and again in the direction of the ancestors, speak here as an auspicious, good-word-speaking one.

Those seers of a thousand paths who guard the sun — O Yama, may this one go to those ascetic ṛṣis, to those born of tapas.

Those who first of all served the cosmic order, the guardians of ṛta, the promoters of ṛta — O Yama, send this one to those ascetic Fathers;

216[206M] // Having sipped water, turned around, and thrice slowly suppressed his breath, he should, with sacred formulas, pay homage to the six seasons and to the ancestors.

The Pathina and the Rohita may be eaten when offered in rites to the gods and ancestors;

and he should always worship the ancestors on the *aṣṭakā* days and on the *anvaṣṭakā* days.

> Year after year, it should be performed for one's mother and father on the day of death.

> Even when the fortnight of the ancestors has passed, as long as the sun is in Virgo, / > the ancestors desire the *śrāddha* given by their sons.

> This fifteenth *tithi* which is famous on earth as Dīpānvitā, O king, / > on it one should give, if it has not been given to the ancestors in Mahālaya.

When "Are you satisfied?

"We have become satisfied.

They stand with a distressed mind.

Polygamy the fathers passed over in silence, as a brutish thing and altogether foreign to the race of men.

And it has been ordained by our fathers that such persons weep for one year, hear for two years, prostrate for three years, and in the seventh stand with the faithful;

And since many in the incursion of the barbarians transgressed their faith in God, performing pagan oaths, and tasting certain unlawful things offered to them among the magical idols, let these be ordered according to the canons already set forth by our fathers.

And since report bore that Numa Pompilius excelled in these, the people itself, passing over its own citizens, with the fathers as its authors, took to itself a king of foreign birth, and summoned that Sabine man to Rome from Cures to reign.

And so, propped and fortified by this counsel and as it were senate, he both waged many wars with his neighbours most successfully, and, though he himself carried home from the spoil nothing to his own house, did not cease to enrich the citizens.

And when he had carried a law concerning his own command, first he doubled that former number of the fathers, and called the ancient fathers those of the greater clans, whom he asked their opinion first, and those admitted by himself those of the lesser.

We must, beyond doubt, believe the ancient and primeval men, as they say, who declared themselves to be the offspring of the gods, and who therefore handed down to us the names of those gods.

In the worship of the gods, follow the example of your ancestors, but believe that the noblest sacrifice and the greatest devotion is to show yourself in the highest degree a good and just man;

And to crown their victory:

Would they not have stoned to death one who was disgracing their valor?

Who is so grudging, who so completely without spirit, that he would not wish to have shared in their exploits?

" Yet I would have you set this aside in such a way as to remember that our ancestors, who believed it, were Stoics;

"The ram, rendered without its testicles, shall bestow the highest satisfaction upon you;

"This ram here has its testicles, while Indra has been rendered without his — take the ram's testicles and quickly give them to Indra.

Hearing the words of Agni, the ancestors assembled, and having extracted the ram's testicles, presented them to the thousand-eyed Indra.

It was because they knew that they owed their successes against the enemy to such qualities that our ancestors looked after the young men.