[23] Associated, some authorities urge, with Germans from the mouth of the Elbe.
[24] _The Dawn of History_, J. L. Myres, p. 199.
[25] British Museum _Guide to the Antiquities of the Bronze Age_, p. 98.
[26] British Museum _Guide to the Antiquities of the Early Iron Age_, p. 8.
[29] British Museum _Guide to the Antiquities of the Bronze Age_, pp. 16, 17.
[31] Campbell's _West Highland Tales_, vol. iii, p. 55.
[32] _A History of Civilization in Palestine_, R. A. S. Macalister.
[33] _The Discoveries in Crete_, Professor R. M. Burrows, p. 100. Dating according to _Crete the Forerunner of Greece_, C. H. and H. B. Hawes, p. xiv.
[Illustration: THE CREMATION GHAT, BENARES 1 Photo. Johnson and Hoffmann]
It seems reasonable to suppose that the cremation rite originated among a nomadic people. The spirits of the dead were got rid of by burning the body: they departed, like the spirit of Patroklos, after they had received their “meed of fire”. Burial sites were previously regarded as sacred because they were haunted by the spirits of ancestors (the Indian _Pitris_ = “fathers”). A people who burned their dead, and were therefore not bound by attachment to a tribal holy place haunted by spirits, were certainly free to wander. The spirits were transferred by fire to an organized Hades, which appears to have been conceived of by a people who had already attained to a certain social organization and were therefore capable of governing the communities which they subdued. When they mingled with peoples practising other rites and professing different religious beliefs, however, the process of racial fusion must have been accompanied by a fusion of beliefs. Ultimately the burial customs of the subject race might prevail. At any rate, this appears to have been the case in Britain, where, prior to the Roman Age, the early people achieved apparently an intellectual conquest of their conquerors; the practice of the cremation rite entirely vanished.
We have gone far afield to find a clue to assist towards the solution of the Aryan problem in India. The evidence accumulated is certainly suggestive, and shows that the conclusions of the early philologists have been narrow in the extreme. If the long-headed Kurds are, as Ripley believes, the descendants of the Mitanni raiders, then the Aryans of history must be included in the Brown race. As, however, cremation was not practised by the Berbers, the Babylonians, the early Cretans, or other representatives of the ancient brunet dolichocephalic peoples, it may be that the custom, which still lingers among the Mongolian Buriats, was not in the narrow sense of Aryan origin. It may have been first practised among an unknown tribe of fire-worshippers, who came under the influence of a great teacher like Zoroaster. We cannot overlook in this connection the possibility of an individual origin for a new and revolutionary system of religious doctrines. Buddhism, for instance, originated with Buddha.