ritual of the Vedic singers, therefore,
may be said to have worshipped One God, though not One alone.

"In the beginning there arose the Golden Child. He was the one born lord
of all that is. He established the earth and this sky. Who is the God to
whom we shall offer our sacrifice?

"He who gives life, he who gives strength; whose command all the Bright
Gods revere; whose shadow is immortality, whose shadow is death. Who is
the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?

"He who, through his power, is the one king of the breathing and
awakening world. He who governs all, man and beast. Who is the God to
whom we shall offer our sacrifice?

"He through whom the sky is bright and the earth firm; he through whom
the heaven was established, nay, the highest heaven; he who measured out
the light and the air. Who is the God to whom we shall offer our
sacrifice?

"He who by his might looked even over the water-clouds; he who alone is
God above all gods. Who is the God to whom we shall offer our
sacrifice?"

While the aboriginal races buried their dead in the earth or under rude
stone monuments, the Aryan--alike in India, in Greece, and in
Italy--made use of the funeral-pile. Several exquisite Sanscrit hymns
bid farewell to the dead:--"Depart thou, depart thou by the ancient
paths to the place whither our fathers have departed. Meet with the
Ancient Ones; meet with the Lord of Death. Throwing off thine
imperfections, go to thy home. Become united with a body; clothe thyself
in a shining form." "Let him depart to those for whom flow the rivers of
nectar. Let him depart to those who, through meditation, have obtained
the victory; who, by fixing their thoughts on the unseen, have gone to
heaven. Let him depart to the mighty in battle, to the heroes who have
laid down their lives for others, to those who have bestowed their goods
on the poor." The doctrine of transmigration was at first unknown. The
circle round the funeral-pile sang with a firm assurance that their
friend went direct to a state of blessedness and reunion with the loved
ones who had gone before. "Do thou conduct us to heaven," says a hymn of
the later Atharva-Veda; "let us be with our wives and children." "In
heaven, where our friends dwell in bliss--having left behind the
infirmities of the body, free from lameness, free from crookedness of
limb--there let us behold our parents and our children." "May the
water-shedding Spirits bear thee upward, cooling thee