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it is equally prevalent among the Hindus, though less prominent because it is only one among the many rites
which engage the attention of that most devout nation. It is one of the main constituents in the religions of
Indo-China and Japan, though the best authorities think that it was not the predominant element in the oldest
form of Shinto. It is less prominent among the Tibeto-Burmese tribes but not absent, for in Tibet there are
both good and evil ghosts who demand recognition by appropriate rites. It is sometimes hard to distinguish it
from the worship of natural forces. For instance in China and southern India most villages have a local deity
who is often nameless. The origin of such deities may be found either in a departed worthy or in some striking
phenomenon or in the association of the two.
The cult of ghosts may be due to either fear or affection, and both motives are found in Eastern Asia. But
though abundant examples of the propitiation of angry spirits can be cited, respect and consideration for the
dead are the feelings which usually inspire these ceremonies at the present day and form the chief basis of
family religion. There is no need to explain this sentiment. It is much stronger in Asia than in Europe but
some of its manifestations may be paralleled by masses and prayers for the dead, others by the care bestowed
on graves and by notices in memoriam. As a rule both in China and India only the last three generations are
honoured in these ceremonies. The reason is obvious: the more ancient ancestors have ceased to be living
memories. But it might be hard to find a theoretical justification for neglecting them and it is remarkable that
in all parts of Asia the cult of the dead fits very awkwardly into the official creeds. It is not really consistent
with any doctrine of metempsychosis or with Buddhist teaching as to the impermanence of the Ego. In China
may be found the further inconsistency that the spirit of a departed relative may receive the tribute of offerings
and salutations called ancestor worship, while at the same time Buddhist services are being performed for his
deliverance from hell. But of the wide distribution, antiquity and strength of the cult there can be no doubt. It
is anterior not only to Brahmanism but to the doctrines of transmigration and karma, and the main occupation
of Buddhist priests in China and Japan is the performance of ceremonies supposed to benefit the dead. Even
within Buddhism these practices cannot be dismissed as a late or foreign corruption. In the Khuddaka-patha
which, if not belonging to the most ancient part of the Buddhist canon, is at least pre-Christian and purely
Indian, the dead are represented as waiting for offerings and as blessing those who give them. It is also
curious that a recent work called Raymond by Sir O. Lodge (1916) gives a view of the state after death which
is substantially that of the Chinese. For its teaching is that the dead retain their personality, concern
themselves with the things of this world, know what is going to happen here and can to some extent render
assistance to the living[106]. Also (and this point is specially remarkable) burning and mutilation of the body
seem to inconvenience the dead.
Early Chinese works prescribe that during the performance of ancestral rites, the ghosts are to be represented
by people known as the personators of the dead who receive the offerings and are supposed to be temporarily
possessed by spirits and to be their mouthpieces. Possession by ghosts or other spirits is, in popular esteem, of
frequent occurrence in India, China, Japan and Indo-China. It is one of the many factors which have
contributed to the ideas of incarnation and deification, that is, that gods can become men and men gods. In
Europe the spheres of the human and divine are strictly separated: to pass from one to the other is exceptional:
a single incarnation is regarded as an epoch-making event of universal importance. But in Asia the frontiers
are not thus rigidly delimitated, nor are God and man thus opposed. The ordinary dead become powers in the
spirit world and can bless or injure here: the great dead become deities: in another order of ideas, the dead
immediately become reincarnate and reappear on earth: the gods take the shape of men, sometimes for the
BOOK II. EARLY INDIAN RELIGION. A GENERAL VIEW 50
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