Worship of ancestors
While taking the journey with Hinduism through History, it was seen that one of the most rudimentary - yet profound - ways of worship is by venerating the dead. That, we saw, was because the dead had the knowledge and experience of death itself. While viewing the similarities in the world-wide veneration of the dead, it is pertinent that we see that even the belief and tradition systems have been the same all around the world. This indicates that either man migrated after the creation of the philosophy or that a philosophy was accepted and spread all over the world from its powerful source some place. Speculatively, it seems likely that in the distant past, it was the former that could have happened.
The Rig Veda specifies that it is of paramount importance to venerate the dead.
Dhanur hastaad aadadaano mrutasyaasme kshatraaya carcase balaaya
Atraiva tvam ih vayam suveeraa vishvaa sprdho abhimaateer jayema (RV 10.18.9)
Taking his bow from the hand of the dead man, for the sake of our vigour, energy and strength, (I say) you are there; may we (who are) here, blessed with male offspring, overcome all the enemies who assail us.
With this rka, a stone is set up to separate the dead and the living.
The Thirukkural talks about the stone that is set up to honour the dead:
Ennaimun nillanmin thevvir palarennai
Munnindru kalnin palar (Thirukkural 771)
Stand not before my chief, O foes!
Many who stood, in stones repose.
A stone is placed in the house of a deceased person for ten days since the time of demise, according to Silappadhikaram:
Saachchadangil irandhaarporuttu Patthunaalaikku naattappadunkal
The death ritual will include placing a stone for the person deceased for ten days from the time of death.
In villages of Tamilnadu, one often comes across the ‘Veerakkal’ (Hero Stone) which is a memorial stone to honour an important person (a hero) who is dead.
Stones used to honour the dead was either large Menhirs, cairns, statues or small stones depending on the importance of the deceased and the tradition followed in the place. Menhirs found all over Europe, Africa, South America and Asia are all to venerate the dead. The famous Stonehenge of Brittany served as a complex to bury the dead.
Dolmens that have played a singnificant part in the evolution of temple architecture have been found nearly all over the Europe and Asia. South Korea has close to 40% of all dolmens found in the world. The largest archipelago, Indonesia, has many menhirs and dolmens concentrated in several islands, Sumatra being of great prominence. Menhirs in Sumatra were consecrated until the early part of the twentieth century.
The archeological findings at Sembiyankandiyur in Tamil Nadu include urns with human bones. This is consistent with the Pitru-medha described in Asvalayana Grhya Sutra which includes post-cremation burial. The bones that remain after the cremation are collected in an urn and buried securely.
The fascination with death is even more powerful than fascination with life. Remaining practically unknown and unknowable, it is the beginning stages to fathoming everything else that is not known until one categorises all the unknowns and unknowables under the title, ‘godhead’. This is why we honour the dead – because it is the initiating step to think about the magnificence of the Universe in which we define our little universes and the roles to play therein.
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written by Riverine, 2010-03-21 20:55:47
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written by Riverine, 2010-03-21 20:52:56
Thank you so much for the link to Fisher's blog and more for your own added value!
It does boggle the mind, doesn't it, the idea of a people so ancient travelling such large distances, (through generations, certainly) and 'civilize' a land with human habitation and beliefs...and the extreme importance they gave to the maens...
suffix nhenge in Arrernte means string
'Nenjam' means heartstring in Tamil too - is that conincidence?
Thank you once again for the wonderful discussion and leads!
Warm Regards...
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written by partha, 2010-03-20 00:55:23
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written by partha, 2010-03-19 23:29:03
There is an able and enthusiastic etymologist by name Jason Fisher in Texas, who blogs essentially on words and their origins in his etymology-site http://lingwe.blogspot.com/. In Julu 2007, he looked at the stone marvels in stonehenge and wondered aloud about the -henge suffix. The result was the blog that you can find in the link http://lingwe.blogspot.com/200...-name.html
Jason makes out that the marvellous stone arrangements are stone hinges or hanging stones, rather than the stones of the semi legendary conqueror of Britain, Hengest.
I am going to assume that the ancient people who placed these stones at Stonehenge came from somewhere near the southern tip of Africa. If they were sailing away from it northwards, they could have landed up in Britain and gone on to live in that special area, where they have left these strings of stones in memory of their dead. Perhaps some of the same tribe sailed off eastwards and landed somwhere near modern Adelaide in Australia, trekking up northwards to the middle of the continent where a small group could survive. The Arrernte are still there (and perhaps nowhere else in Australia) and the non-Arrernte people living near them refer to filial relationships among the members of the tribe as 'strings'. Perhaps the idea for this expression came from the hair-strings which the Arrernte use to tie up the detached umbilical cords of babies before placing them in pouches. They believe that this ritual keeps the babies from mournfully missing their mothers. The suffix nhenge in Arrernte means string, so that nyenhenge and menhenge would refer to such filial attachments between father and child on the one hand and mother and child on the other.
Did the Arrernte who travelled to England live on in the Stone henge area where they placed menhenge, the strings of memorial stones for succeeding generations in a matriarchal sequence? Did the later Bretons who called stones maen, translate menhenge into maenhenge? You see, taolmaen, tables of stone, were old English dolmens. and maenhir, tall stones, were to be old English menhirs!
The Alice Spring Arrerntes would not have been obliged to look for loosened or broken rocks for menhirs or dolmens. The natural rock formations south of them would have provided enough and more memorial sites for them.
Warm regards. Partha.
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written by partha, 2010-02-28 18:28:06
From the ten day naattukkal to the forever menhirs, man's fascination with honoring the mystery of death with something that he knows to be lasting, stable, enduringly hard, has been consistent.
There is the consistent fascination of the researcher in your reference to ancient funerary practices both in your earlier blog in 2008, Hinduism through History Part 3 and now in 2010 in the Appendix.
I commented then
Like the houses of the Infinite, which mankind has been fashioning from the prehistoric primitive eras upto the most recent temple-building past, and not only in India,
here is from you an analytical and sentimental edifice assembling concepts through all of time and therefore capable of being read and appreciated for a very long time to come. I shall bring to mind your own reference to the palaces and special dwellings of the mighty having been ravaged to dust by time, while the houses they built for their ancestors and to the ultimate (almost theoretical) ancestor have endured.
Even among the varieties of such ancient stone-relations to the highest, it is elevating to find that ancient Indian ones still carry meanings and messages for the contemporary Indian minds.
Congratulations on the construction of this marvellous edifice!
The construction continues to look grand with the added wing as well.
Warm regards. Partha.
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Apart from the plural of the word for flowing hair on the necks of some animals, English dictionaries also feature the always plural word manes, pronounced maenees, accepted into English from Latin. This word means ancestors, as you can read in the link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manes
Some Indian Indologists and Sanskrit scholars have been using this word as an one to one equivalent of the word pitrus and hence the impression in your mind that it is an Indian language word. It is when we rightly call English an Indian language, not otherwise.
But then stones have always been associated with ancestors all around the world and the old maen word may have led to the Latin and English word for ancestors, who knows?
If you want an Indian connection in any case, you will be happy to know the coincidental stone connection. The daughter of Meru was called Mena or Menaka (different from the Apsaras). And whom would she marry except another illustrious super colossal stone called Himavan? Mother of the Ganga and also of Uma, Mena is as much deserving of our worship as all our Manes. Perhaps the daughter in law of Indira Gandhi spells her name as Maneka rather than Menaka to be truly associated with the Maen origin of the name.
I should stop somewhere. Here.
Regards. Partha.