Page:The Mythology of All Races Vol 6 (Indian and Iranian).djvu/144

ioo INDIAN MYTHOLOGY are a hundred times greater than the joys of earth. Those who sacrifice properly are rewarded by unity with and identity of abode with the sun, Agni, Vayu, Indra, Varuna, Brhaspati, Prajapati, and Brahma, though this identification is common only in the later Brdhmanas. On the other hand, we hear now of hell: the Atharvaveda tells of it as the Naraka Loka (in contrast with the Svarga Loka, the place of Yama), the abode of female goblins and sorceresses, the place of blind or black darkness. It is described in slight detail in its horror in that Veda (v. 19) and fully in the Satapatha Brdhmana (XL vi. 1), where Bhrgu, son of Varuna, sees a vision of men cutting up men and men eating men. The same idea, which is clearly one of retribution in the next world for actions in this, is paralleled in the Kausltaki Brdhmana (xi. 3), where we learn that the animals which man eats in this world will devour him in yonder world if he has not a certain saving knowledge, though how the reward or the penalty is accorded does not clearly appear. The Satapatha Brdhmana (VI. ii. 2. 27; X. vi. 3. 1) holds that all are born again in the next world and are rewarded according to their deeds, whether good or bad; but no statement is made as to who is to decide the quality of the acts.

In the Taittiriya Aranyaka (VI. v. 16) the good and the untruthful are said to be separated before Yama, though there is no suggestion that he acts as judge; but the Satapatha (XI. ii. 7. 33) introduces another mode of testing, namely, weighing in a balance, though by whom the man is weighed is not declared. Possibly this is a reference to some kind of ordeal. In the Upanisads and in the legal text-books we find a new conception — that of rebirth after death in the present, not in yonder, world. It has no clear predecessor in the Brdhmanas proper, but it is hinted at in the doctrine of the later Brahmanas that after death a man may yet die over and over again, from which the doctrine of metempsychosis is an easy step; while a further idea, also with some amount of preparation in the Satapatha Brdhmana, regards the man who attains true