discovered the bed of a once-massive, now dried-up river, six miles wide in places, and this was subsequently confirmed by satellite photographs.38 Along this dried river bed (and a major tributary, making seven rivers in all in the Punjab) are located no fewer than 300 archaeological sites. This thus confirms, for the indigenists at least, not only that the area of the Rig Veda was inside India, but that the drying-up of the river helps explain the collapse of the Indus valley civilisation.39 They also point to recent research on the astronomical events in the Rig Veda which, they say, confirm that these scriptures are much older than the 1900-1200 BC date traditionally ascribed. They argue that the astronomy, and the associated mathematics, show that the Indo-Aryans were indigenous to north-west India, that that is where the Indo-European languages began, and that Indian mathematics were much in advance of those elsewhere. While this debate is inconclusive at the moment (there are serious intellectual holes in both the migrationist and the indigenous theories), it remains true that Indian mathematics was very strong historically, and that, as was discussed in the last chapter, a very old script-perhaps the oldest yet discovered-was unearthed recently in India. In Vedic thought, man's life fell into two phases. His earthly life was seen as the more desirable. The hymns of the Rig Veda speak of a people living life to the full-valuing good health, eating and drinking, material luxuries, children.40 But there was a post-mortem phase, the quality of which was, to an extent, determined by one's piety on earth. However, the two phases were definitive: there was no idea whatsoever that the soul might return to live again on earth-that was a later invention. In the early stage, when Vedic bodies were buried, the dead were imagined as living in an underworld, presided over by Yama, the death-god.41 The dead were buried with personal articles and even food, though what part of a person was thought to survive is not clear.42 The Indo-Aryans thought of an individual as composed of three entities-the body, the asu , and the manas . The asu was in essence the 'life principle', equivalent to the Greek psyche , while the manas were the seat of the mind, the will and the emotions, equivalent to the Greek thymos . There appears to have been no word, and no idea, for the soul as an 'essential self'. Why there was a change from burial to cremation isn't clear either. If one accepts the existence of souls, it follows that there is a need for a place where they can go, after death. This raises the question of where a whole constellation of associated ideas came from-the afterlife, resurrection, and heaven and hell. The first thing to say is that heaven, hell and the immortal soul were relative latecomers in the ancient world.43 The modern concept of the immortal soul is a Greek idea, which owes much to Pythagoras. Before that, most ancient civilisations thought that man had two kinds of soul. There was the 'free-soul', which represented the individual personality. And there were a number of 'body-souls' which endowed the body with life and consciousness.44 For the early Greeks, for example, human nature was composed of three entities: the body, the psyche , identified with the life principle and located in the head; and the thymos , 'mind' or 'consciousness', located in the phrenes , or lungs.45 During life, the thymos was regarded as more important but it didn't survive death, whereas the psyche became the eidolon , a shadowy form of the body. This distinction was not maintained beyond the sixth century BC, when the psyche came to be thought of as both the essential self, the seat of consciousness and the life principle. Pindar thought the psyche was of divine origin and therefore immortal.46 In developing the idea of the immortal soul Pythagoras was joined by Parmenides and Empedocles, other Greeks living alongside him in southern Italy and Sicily. They were associated with a mystical and puritanical sect known as the Orphics, who at times were 'fanatical vegetarians'. This appears to have been part of a revolt over sacrifice and the sect used mind-altering drugs-hashish, hemp and cannabis (though here the scholarship is very controversial). These ideas and practices are said to have come from the Scythians, whose homeland was north of the Black Sea (and was visited by Homer). They boasted a curious cult, surrounding a number of individuals suffering a chronic physical disease, possibly haemochromatosis, and possibly brought on by rich iron deposits in the area. This condition culminates in total impotence and eunuchism. There are a number of accounts of cross-dressing in the area and these individuals may have led the funerary ceremonies in Scythia, at which
ecstasy-inducing drugs were used.47 Was this cult the foundation for Orphism and were the trances and hallucinations induced by drugs the mechanism whereby the Greeks conceived the idea of the soul and, associated with it, reincarnation? Pythagoras, Empedocles and Plato all believed in reincarnation and in metempsychosis-the idea that souls could come back in other animals and even in plants. The Orphics believed that the actual form the soul took on reincarnation was a penalty for some 'original sin'.48 Both Socrates and Plato shared Pindar's idea of the divine origin of the soul and it is here that the vision took root that the soul was in fact more precious than the body. This was not, it should be said, the majority view of Athenians, who mainly thought of souls as unpleasant things who were hostile to the living. Many Greeks did not believe that there was life after death.* Among those Greeks who did believe in some form of afterlife, the dead went straight to the underworld which, in the Iliad , was guarded by canine Cerberus. The soul could reach this 'mirthless place' only by crossing the river Styx. The underworld was called Hades, which derives from a root word meaning invisible, unseen.49 Death seems to have been regarded then as unavoidable. Athena tells Odysseus' son Telemachus that 'death is common to all men, and not even the gods can keep it off a man they love...'50 By the later parts of the Odyssey , however, there has been a change. For example, Proteus tells Menelaus that he will be sent 'to the Elysian plain at the ends of the earth'. The name Elysion is pre-Greek and so this idea may have begun elsewhere. By the time of Hesiod's Works and Days (late eighth century BC) we hear of the Islands of the Blessed, to which many heroes will be sent after their lives on earth are over. At much the same time, in epic poems, we hear for the first time of Charon, the ferryman of the dead. In the fifth century, there began in Greece the practice of burying the deceased with an obol , a small coin to pay Charon.51 Around 432 BC, on an official war monument, the souls of dead Athenians are described as being received by the aither , 'the upper air', though their bodies will remain on earth. In Plato and in many Greek tragedies we learn that the Athenians did not seem to believe in rewards and punishments after death. 'In fact, they do not seem to have expected very much at all. "After death every man is earth and shadow: nothing goes to nothing".' (This is a character in one of Euripides' plays.) In Plato's Phaedo , Simmias betrays his worry that at his death his soul will be scattered 'and this is their end'.52 Paradise-the word, at least-is much better documented. It is based on an old Median word, pari = around, and daeza = wall. (The Medes were a civilisation in Iran in the sixth century BC.) The word paridaeza came variously to mean a vineyard, a grove of date palms, a place were bricks were made and even, on one occasion, the 'red-light' quarter of Samos. But its most probable association was with royal hunting forests, or simply the lush, shaded gardens that were the prerogative of the aristocracy. This could be allied to the belief, considered below, that only kings and aristocrats could go to paradise, and all others went to hell. There are some indications in Pythagoras' writings that his idea of the afterlife, and the immortal soul, was reserved for the aristocracy, so this may have been an idea that was born as a way of preserving upper-class privileges at a time when that class was being marginalised, as cities (and merchants) grew more important. For the Israelites, the soul was never developed as a sophisticated idea. The God of Israel formed Adam from the ' adamah , the clay, and then breathed 'the breath of life into him', so that he became a nephesh , or 'living soul'.53 This is similar to the Akkadian word napistu , and is associated with blood, the 'life substance', which drains away at death.54 The Hebrews never had a word for the 'essential self' that survived death. We should not forget that the entire book of Job in the Hebrew scriptures is concerned with the problem of faith and suffering and inequality in a life where there is no hereafter (all the rewards promised to the Jews by their God are worldly). Even with the advent of Messianism in Judaism, there is still no concept of the soul. There was the concept of Sheol, but this is more akin to the English word 'grave' than Hades, which is how it was often translated. 'Sheol was located beneath the earth ( Psalm 63.10), filled with worms and dust ( Isaiah , 14.11) and impossible to escape from ( Job , 7.9f.).' It was only after the exile in Babylon that good and bad departments of Sheol were envisaged, and it became associated with Gehenna, a valley south of Jerusalem where it was at first believed that punishments would be handed out after the Last Judgement. Soon after, it became the name for the fiery hell.55