The view that cremation was a distinctively Indo-European form of disposal of the dead cannot be supported by any evidence of value. There is abundant proof that burial is at least as ancient a method, and, indeed, it is possible to hold that it was Indo-European, while burning was introduced after that period among the different peoples either independently or by borrowing. The Vedic evidence, as has been shown, proves that burial was early; Herodotos" ascribes the usage to the Persians, while the Magoi, possibly by religious conservatism, preserved the method of exposure; burial he also
Learned Brahmans, village headmen, and Ksatriyas are enumerated as called upon so to act, and the ritual still rarely survives; Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth., pp. 54 f.
2 W. R. Halliday, Roman Religion, pp. 89 ff. 3 This is recognized by Halliday, op. cit.,
Pp. 114 ff.
• Warde Fowler (Roman Ideas of Deity, pp. 30 ff.) exalts Jupiter into a primitive monotheistic deity, a result of his treatment of the religion as abstract. Grierson’s theory (Trans. Third Int. Cong. Hist. Rel. ii. 44 f.) of an early Indian monotheism developed from
Indo-Iranian sun worship is incapable of serious demonstration.
⚫ Cumont (Théologie solaire, pp. 3 ff.) has induced Fowler (pp. 56 f.) to believe sun worship an invention of astronomers, and to disbelieve the evidence of Varro, L.L. v. 68, 74, and the existence of Sol Indiges. The effort of L. Malten (Arch. Jahrb. xxvii (1912), 232 ff.) to prove Hephaistos Lycian, not Greek, is clearly unconvincing.
i. 140. Cf. C. Clemen, Die griechischen und lateinischen Nachrichten ūber die persische Religion, pp. 201 ff.
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assigns to the Iranian Scythians. In the case of Greece the existence of a pre-Hellenic population which practised burial renders the evidence specially obscure, but it is important that in the earliest Athenian cemeteries in the dipylon’ graves of the geometric period of art cremation is very rare. The evidence from Italy shows burials preceding cremations in the oldest cemeteries, and even if the people of the terremare, perhaps in part the ancestors of the Latins, were addicted to burning, it is impossible to assume that burial was in Italy derived from the non-Indo-European population. The laws of the Ten Tables forbade the burial or burning of a dead man within the city, and there is a remarkable provision in an old law of the regal period which provides for the saving of the embryo in the case of the burial of a pregnant woman.5 That burial was the more ancient custom is suggested strongly by the fact that conservative families like the Cornelii persisted in burying their dead until the time of the Dictator Sulla, whose cremation was dictated by political reasons. Archaeological evidence in the lands held by the Slavs, Teutons, and Celts establishes the priority of burial, and it is not plausible to suppose that the appearance of burning there meant the advent of a new race. Cremation is recorded for the Celts by Caesar and the Hallstatt cemetery; for the Teutons by Tacitus,’ and later evidence establishes it for the Slavs and Lithuanians. All the evidence, therefore, is compatible with the view that burning was a rite introduced, comparatively late in some cases, in the separate life of the Indo-European peoples.
8
6
It is, however, extremely difficult to arrive at any theory establishing the period when or the place whence the new practice came to be disseminated. The theory of Ridgeway which makes the Celts protagonists in the matter is most implausible in the form in which he has stated it, and there is no conclusive reason to assume that the use must have been started by one only of the Indo-European peoples. Whether the motive of burning was due to a change in the aspect in which men regarded the dead, or arose from practical considerations, such as those affecting the advance of a people who could not continue to bury their dead and to cherish them in their ancestral homes, there is no special reason to suppose that only one Indo-European people invented it. The Greeks invading Hellas, and the Indians invading India, may have been moved by similar motives independently, or again in one case one, in another yet a different, motive may have been operative, and it is not necessary to seek any theory which will explain all cases. Borrowing from any non- Indo-European source is implausible, in the absence of any clear evidence of the prevalence of the rite among peoples by whom the Indo-Europeans could have been influenced.
1 iv. 71.
- See e. g. Zehetmaier, Leichenverbrennung
und Leichenbestattung im alten Hellas. The lake dwellers of Europe first buried, then burned their dead, and it has been suggested that cremation is a specific. usage of broad-headed peoples (CAH. i. 73). Peet, Stone and Bronze Ages in Italy, p. 370; von Duhn, Rūckblick auf die Grāberforschung (Heidelberg, 1911), Modestov, Introduction à l’histoire romaine (Paris, 1907), p. 107; cf. Peake, The Bronze Age and the Celtic World, pp. 122, 131, 163; CAH. i. 74, 108, 110, where they are taken as Alpine
20*
18;
4
in race; Indo-European, CAH. ii. 569. x. 1. Cf. x. 8 f.; Cicero, Leg. ii. 22; Pliny,
N. H. vii. 187.
Dig. xi. 8. 2 (Bruns, Fontes Iuris Romani®, p. 11). Similar instructions are given in India before cremation; Baudhayana Pitṛmedha Sutra, ii. 15; Vaikhanasa Grhya Sutra, vii. 4.
B.G. vi. 19; Pomponius Mela, iii. 19. Cf. MacBain, Celtic Mythology and Religion, pp. 235 ff.; CAH, ii, 592 ff.
1 Germ. 27.
Early Age of Greece, i. chap. vii. Peake (The Bronze Age and the Celtic World, pp. 101 ff.) does not adopt this theory. Cf. CAH. ii. 473 ff.
628
Appendix F
3
The motives which may have influenced burning are many, apart from the necessities or convenience of invaders. The removal of a dangerous object is obviously one possibility; the view that it was intended to facilitate the celestial existence of the soul by ridding it of the encumbrance of the body has been strongly supported, but, as we have seen, is not borne out by any Vedic evidence. Paton 2 adopts the suggestion of E. Meyer that cremation existed in Indo-European times alongside with burial, but that it was performed originally only in the case of heroes, chiefs or kings, who were believed to partake of the divine nature and, therefore, were returned by fire to the celestial regions. In support of this is adduced the fact that in Egypt the ideas of the future of the king gradually became applied to the ordinary people, as did cremation in Greece. But the evidence for this distinction is inadequate; in India there is nothing of the kind, the fact that children under two years of age were not cremated, adduced by Paton, is irrelevant, for ascetics shared the same fate, and there is no trace of the caste differentiation in this regard which would be necessary on the theory of a distinction based on an aristocratic practice. It is not the case that the distinction can be seen in Homer, and the evidence of Caesar and Tacitus regarding the Celts and the Teutons says nothing of a distinction between the treatment of the great and the mere clansmen.
5
Definite proof of the Indo-European character of burial of the dead would be afforded if it were possible to accept as proved Peake’s identification of them with the Kurgan people of the steppes cast of the Dnieper, who certainly buried their dead in a contracted position, the skeletons found being thickly covered with red ochre, a custom which is attested as early as Aurignacian times. The evidence, as has been mentioned, for this theory is
1 Cf. Sophus Mūller, Nord. Altertums-
kunde, i. 363 ff.; Scheftelowitz, Archiv f. Religionswissenschaft, xix. 219 f., who connects it with the belief in a star destiny for the soul. His argument that, if the use is apotropaeic, the burning of utensils, &c., is meaningless, is clearly mistaken. A banned soul might return for his own, and his connexion with them has rendered their retention unwise.
Spiritism, p. 129.
Gesch. des Alt. ii. 771.
See e.g. J. H. Breasted, Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt, pp. 103, 256; Cambridge Ancient History, i. 850 f.
Cf. Lang, Homer and his Age, p. 99; Keith, JRAS. 1912, p. 473, n. The ethnic question discussed by me there still remains unsolved. Leaf (IIomer and History, p. 87) adopts the impossible view that the Greek mainland was occupied by neolithic peoples speaking a Greek dialect of which Arcadian may be a descendant, who were first dominated over by Minoan and next by Hellenic Achaeans; Peake (The Bronze Age and the Celtic World, chap. ix) makes the mainland population of eastern Alpine, the Cretan of Mediterranean (pp. 28 ff.) stock, while the Minoan overlords are Prospectors’, of
a blend of Mediterranean and eastern Alpine stocks, who may be of Sumerian origin and akin to the Etruscans. The Achacans are a small body of intrusive Nordics, while no place is left for an earlier Greek speaking population. Evans again (JHS. xxxii. 281 ff.), by insisting on the continuity of Minoan and Mycenaean culture, brings down any real influence of the Hellenic influx to the period of dipylon culture, which is clearly too late, and has provoked the equally, impossible suggestion (T. W. Allen, JIIS. xxxiii. 115) that the Minoans must have been Achaeans. It is much more probable that early Greeks took a substantial part in developing Mycenaean civilization under Minoan influence, and that the epic reflects this Greek civilization, not memories of the Minoan epic. against G. Murray’s traditionalist theory of the Iliad, J. T. Sheppard’s able analysis, The Pattern of the Iliad (1922); Bury, CAH. ii. 502 ff.
Sec
• The Bronze Age and the Celtic World, pp. 67 ff.; cf. Minns, Scythians and Greeks, pp. 142 ff.; Rostovtzeff, Journal des Savants, 1920, pp. 60, 109 ff. Cf. the blood-offerings for the dead, to strengthen their life; Paton, Spiritism, pp. 72 f., 140 f.
Cremation and Burial
629
inadequate to establish it, but it may be noted that the Vedic Indians appear to have agreed with these people in their tendency to simplicity and economy in regard to the offerings deposited with the dead, for the Vedic offerings are, as we have seen, strictly limited in quantity and quality. The contracted position of the dead may have been induced by the desire to reproduce the character of a foetus, awaiting new birth in the world to come, and the idea of rebirth as an embryo is conspicuous in the Vedic Dikṣa ceremonial. The barrow may be compared with the Vedic memorial mound. It might further be conjectured that the use of burning was influenced by the practice of the neighbouring peoples of Tripolye culture who regularly, if not invariably burned their dead. But we have no real means of arriving at any valid conclusion.