Great Indian Religion

SR No.: 007305
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: G T Bettany
Publisher: Ward Lock Bowden and Co
Publication Year: 1892
Total Pages: 312
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 42 MB

Page 29

FUTURE PUNISHMIENT. in battles, to the heroes who have there sacrificed their lives, or to those who have bestowed thousands of largesses. Let him depart, Yama, to those austere ancient fathers who have preached and promoted sacred rites." These fathers are in some hymns held up as objects of admiration to their descendants; their descendants supplicate their good will, deprecate their wrath, and pray for their protection. They are asked to give them tealth, long life, and offspring. They are supposed to rejoice in libations and sacrificial food, and to come in thousands to the sacrifices.
As to future punishment, Indra is in the tenth book of the Rig Veda prayed to consign to the lower darkness the man who injures his worshipper; but it is Future not always certain that this lower darkness punishment. signifies a place of punishment. In the ninth book Soma is said to hurl the hated and irreligious into the abyss; but references to future punishment are confessedly vague and indistinct in the Rig Veda.
One of the finest of the hymns of the Rig Veda is the 121st in the tenth book, thus translated by Max Müller :
"In the beginning there arose the Source of golden light—He was the only born Lord of all that is. He established the earth, and the sky :- Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice? This last clause is repeated after each verse.)
"He who gives life, He who gives strength; whose blessing all the bright gods desire; whose shadow is immortality; whose shadow is death.
“He who through His power is the only King of the breathing and awakening world ; He who governs all, man and beast.
“He whose power these snowy mountains, whose power the sea proclaims, with the distant river-He whose these regions are as it were His two arms.
"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 in the air.
"He to whom heaven and earth, standing firm by His