Hades in the west.

In Babylonia "the mountain of the west, where the sun set, was a pre-eminently funereal place,” and 'the entrance to Hades was near this mountain of the west." But though the belief in an entrance in the far-off west is common and widely spread, it did not occur to every people, or did not always find favour. For instance, it did not become known to the Aryan peoples until after they had settled in the countries occupied by them in historic times; and even then it did not dawn upon all of them, for it was unknown to the Romans, who until late times were quite satisfied with the opening in the Comitium, and regularly continued to roll away the stone, the lapis manalis, which blocked it, in order to allow the manes to come up for their offerings, on August 24th, October 5th, and November 8th. In other countries, as in Greece and Babylonia, the western gate remained only one of several entrances to the underworld, with nothing to distinguish it particularly from the rest. And neither Greeks nor Romans (by their own unaided efforts) nor the Babylonians got beyond the old belief in a gloomy, sunless Hades or Orcus, the common destination of all men, good or bad.

Elsewhere, however, the glowing west of the sunset became the place where the souls of the departed assembled to wait for the moment when the sun's arrival would open the portals of the nether world and let them in. According as the sun set beyond a plain, the sea, or mountains, the bright gathering-place was an island across the sea, a place behind the hills or beyond some distant fields. In any case, what was the constant gathering-place of the continually dying came necessarily to be a place in which spirits of the dead were constantly to be found, and so a permanent abode of the dead. But the old belief in the underground world of ghosts was much too firmly rooted in the minds. of men to be ousted by this new view; and accordingly an accommodation was found-both the nether world and the western world were abodes of the dead. Then the existence of two such different abodes, one gloomy and sunless, the other suffused with light and warmth, called for explanation; and this demand was, I conjecture, if not the cause, at any1 Lenormant, Chaldean Magic (E. T.), 168.

rate the occasion of the retribution theory. The question became pressing, which souls went to the cheerful western home, which to the dreary world below? Probably it was taken for granted at first that the chiefs, who took the best things here, had a right to the more attractive region after death; then, that the best warriors would claim an entrance. The two views were combined by the Ahts: " In Vancouver's Island, the Ahts fancied Quawteaht's calm, sunny, plenteous land in the sky as the resting-place of high chiefs, who live in one great house . . . while the slain in battle have another to themselves. But otherwise all Indians of low degree go deep down under the earth to the land of Chay-her, with its poor houses and no salmon and small deer, and blankets so small and thin, that when the dead are buried the friends often bury blankets with them."1 "The rude Tupinambas of Brazil think the souls of such as had lived virtuously, that is to say, who have well avenged themselves and eaten many of their enemies, will go behind the great mountains, and dance in beautiful gardens with the souls of their fathers; but the souls of the effeminate and worthless, who have not striven to defend their country, will go to Aygnan." 2 In the Tonga Islands it is only aristocratic souls that go to Bolotu, the western and fortunate isle, "full of all finest fruits and loveliest. flowers, that fill the air with fragrance, and come anew the moment they are plucked; birds of beauteous plumage are there, and hogs in plenty, all immortal save when killed" to be eaten, and even then "new living ones appear immediately to fill their places."s

There was, then, in the west, at the entrance of the sun's nether domains, a happy other-world to which the souls of the valiant and the virtuous went; and there was the old, cheerless, unhappy other-world to which went the cowards and the bad. To call the one Heaven and the other Hell, would be misleading, for these terms bear a reference to religion, and the latter further implies a place of torment. Now, as we have said, early speculations on the other-world were philosophical rather than religious: it was only in course of time that the happy other-world came to be adopted into antique religions. The Jews were cut off

by their primitive prohibition of ancestor-worship from the philosophical speculations which resulted in a happy otherworld of bodily delights; and it was only by degrees that the cheerless nether ghost-land came to be a place of active torment. Egyptian religion is instructive on both points. The righteous soul went to the happy fields of Aalu, where the height of the corn, we are told, "is seven cubits, and that of the ears is two (in some readings four) cubits," but the reward of the righteous is not spiritual, it is earthly; and, as depicted on the monuments of the old Empire, it has not risen above the level of peoples in the continuancestage of development-except that their dead do not enjoy their occupations much, and the Egyptian did enjoy his : "the tomb of Ti at Sakkarah, for instance, presents us with pictures of the after-world, in which the dead man lives over again his life in this; he farms, hunts, superintends his workmen and slaves, and feasts, just as he had done on earth." "12 A more naïve confession of the fact that the happy other-world of the Egyptian was only an improvement on the original ghost-land, and not a place of spiritual bliss superior to the delights of this world, could not be found than that which is contained in the rubric to the first chapter of the Book of the Dead, describing the lot of the righteous soul: "There shall be given to him bread and beer, and flesh upon the tables of Ra; he will work in the fields of Aaru, and there shall be given to him the wheat and barley which are there, for he shall flourish as though he were upon earth”3 -no higher or more spiritual ideal entered or could enter into the composition of the Egyptian abode of bliss, because its origin was essentially non-religious. But if the happy world had not been developed into a heaven, neither on the monuments of the old Empire had the cheerless underground world become a place of torment: "we should look in vain in them for those representations of the torments and trials which await the dead below, of the headless souls and horrible coils of the monstrous serpent Apepi, that startle us on the pictured walls of the royal tombs at Thebes."

In India, too, the underground world originally, like

1 Renouf, Hibbert Lecture, 181. Renouf, Hibbert Lecture, 192-3.

2 Sayce, Hdt. i.-iii. 346.

4

* Sayce, 347.

Hades and Sheol, was the land to which went the souls of all, good and bad; but then the happy other-world drew off a portion of its population, namely, the souls of those who in their lives had been worshippers of Soma, and left only the bad to go to the world below. At first, apparently, the contrast between the cheerlessness of the old ghost-land and the delights of the happy world, where soma could be drunk for ever, seems to have constituted sufficient punishment for the bad. But in course of time, in India, as in Egypt, torments were added, and "the ultimate outcome of this evolution," in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C., “is a series of hell visions, which for puerile beastliness and horror outvie anything perhaps that even this hideous phase of theological fancy has pictured." 1

The idea that the place where the sun went down was the entrance to the nether world, led, as we have seen, to the belief that there was a happy other-world in the west. But it also led men to find a happy other-world elsewhere, e.g. in the sun or in the sky. How it might naturally do so will be clear, if we reflect that it was the sun's descent below the horizon which was supposed to open the western entrance to ghostland: thus the funeral dirges of the Dayaks describe how the spirits of the departed have to run westward at full speed, through brake and briar, over rough ground and cutting coral, to keep up with the sun, and slip through the clashing gates by attaching themselves to him. Now, though holding on to the sun in order to win through the momentarily open entrance was at first simply a means by which the ghost might reach its underground abode, yet it was indispensable and all-important, and so might easily come to be considered the only thing necessary for the ghost who was to be at peace, and to be released from the cruel race after the sun. The ghost, it should perhaps be said, who could not keep up with the sun and arrive at the entrance simultaneously with him, has to recommence the race next day hence rest and release for the departed spirit were only to be found in catching up and joining the sunThus the sun was the resting-place But the old belief in the underground

:

after that came peace. of the departed.

Bastian, op. cit. 25.

spirit-land still continued to exist; and the fact that there were two other worlds was explained by the retribution theory. The sun was the abode of departed chiefs and warriors among the Apalaches of Florida and the Natchez of the Mississippi; the sun or the bright sky generally was the happy other-world assigned in India to the soma devotee.

The idea that the souls of the righteous went to the sun was one of the many different and inconsistent beliefs for which accommodation was found, somehow or other, in the state-religion of ancient Egypt. But as provision was already made in the blissful fields of Aalu for the departed, an abode in the sun was superfluous; and it never succeeded in displacing the former, because it held out no particular attractions, whereas in Aalu the departed was just as well off as if he were alive. Hence, union with the sun continued to be simply an alternative-not the only alternative, as we shall see to Aalu. Attempts, however, were made to bring the sun theory into organic relation with the other elements of Egyptian religion. In the Middle and New Empires, the Osiris myth gave rise to those ideas of afterdeath torments which find such ample expression on the monuments of the period and in the Book of the Dead;1 and it was by union with the sun, Osiris, by becoming an Osiris, that the deceased was enabled to pass by and triumph over all the horrible monsters and dangers which beset his path through the underworld. Now this provided the Egyptian with a motive for desiring to become an Osiris, but it did not diminish his desire for the earthly and agricultural delights of Aalu, and it did not entirely clear up the relations of these two forms of beatification. Philosophy therefore came to the rescue: all things and beings are made of certain elements, or rather they are but different compounds of one element, different modes of one essence, for there is but one thing real in all the universe, and that is the divine essence, God. Eventually, all things and beings must be resolved into their constituent parts, must revert to the original essence of which they are but transient modes. The divine essence was the god Osiris; to become an Osiris 1 Sayce, loc. cit.