Page:History of India Vol 1.djvu/211

Rh two pieces of wood, the Arani, for the production of the Ahavaniya fire on the next morning. The sacrificer and his wife laid them on their laps, performed propitiatory ceremonies, and remained awake the whole night and kept up the fire. In the morning the Adhvaryu extinguished the fire, or if there was to be a Dakshinagni, he kept it till that fire was kindled. Such, in brief, is the ceremony of the Agnyadhana, or the setting up of sacrificial fires, which formed an important duty in the life of every Hindu householder in ancient days, when the gods were worshipped by each man on his hearth, and when temples and idols were unknown.

In ancient ages burial was practised by the Hindus. In the Epic Period, however, the custom of burying had ceased altogether; the dead were burnt, and the ashes were buried. According to the account in the White Yajur-Veda, the bones of the dead were collected in a vessel and buried in the ground near a stream, and a mound was raised as high as the knee and covered with grass. The relatives then bathed and changed their clothes and left the funeral ground. The same ceremony is more fully described in the Aranyaka of the Black Yajur-Veda. It is scarcely necessary to add that the custom which now prevails among the Hindus is simple cremation, without the burial of the ashes, and probably began early in the Christian Era.

Another important rite which deserves some explanation is the Pindapitri-yajna, or the gift of cakes to the departed ancestors. The cakes were offered to Fire and to Soma, and the Fathers were invoked to receive