CONCEPTS OF DEAD AMONG ANCIENT CIVILIZATION 29 



offended, followed by confession and contrition. Instead of being 

 a dual affair, it thus evolved into a triangular situation: god, 

 demon and man, with the first having some measure of control 

 over the second and the second over the third. 



The priests (rulers) entered the picture by conducting pub- 

 lic ceremonies, which became a mixture of magic and religion. 

 This supplanted the less official rites among the masses. These 

 individuals tried to counteract the practitioners of the black art, 

 the numerous wizards and witches who used their devilish art 

 to injure and destroy honest folk, by using primitive sympathetic 

 magic: making an image of the ones diagnosed as being responsi- 

 ble for the misfortunes and maltreating it in various ways, by 

 burning or melting, shooting arrows or sticking pins into it, etc. 



The Babylonians were pre-eminent in developing the art of 

 divination. The specialists were learned men in all methods con- 

 cerned with discovering the ways of strange and mysterious hap- 

 penings. Unusual astronomical and meteorological events were 

 everywhere regarded as ominous signs by priestly interpreters, who 

 reduced them all into a system. 



In harmony with this mental state, the possibility of a retribu- 

 tive hereafter, never occupied the imaginations of the Baby- 

 lonians. They buried their dead simply beneath the houses in 

 which they lived, sometimes in pottery coffins, great jars, or in 

 reed mats. At funerals, officiating priests asked for and got ex- 

 tortionate fees. After interment, food and drink were offered to- 

 the dead. There was no suggestion o£ a final judgment or de- 

 liverance from the gloomy, nether world to which they were all 

 assigned; this was conceived as being a vast cavern within the heart 

 of the earth into which light never penetrated so that the ever- 

 increasing ghostly population had to sit in total darkness, with 

 nothing but mud and dust available for food. Like all primi- 

 tives, they were mortally afraid of the dead body and avoided it 

 (Moore, '13). 



E. India 



India has had an interesting evolution in her religion and 

 concepts of the dead. Going back to 1000 B.C., the people wor- 

 shiped gods of nature which were neither tribal nor local. These 



