CREMATION AND FOUR STAGES OFLIFE Dearfriends,
While defining the four stages of life, the last twostages are vanaprastha andSanyasa. We have example of Kunthi along with Gandhari and Dhritharashtagoing for Vanaprastha after a time Dharamaputhra started ruling the country afterthe war, as told in the Mahabharatha. We know during Vanaprastha, all those died.No anthyakarmas were performedby Pandavas. I made a Google search about Antyakarmas When did cremation start in Hinduism? Early Cremations in India >From the time of the Rig Veda, which contains passages possibly writtenas far >aback as 2000 B.C., Hindus have cremated the dead although smallchildren and >ascetic were sometimes buried and low caste members sometimesburied their own. What are the stages of life according to Vedas? The four asramas are: Brahmacharya (student), Gṛhastha(householder), Vanaprastha (forest walker/forest dweller), and Sannyasa(renunciate). The Asrama system is one facet of the Dharma concept in Hinduism. We know all Vedas were there already and codified by Vedavyasa in to four- Rig, Yajur, Sama and Adharva. This was during Dwaparayuga. My doubt is antyakarmas are done to the deceasedelders. The procedures are told for it. But according to four stages of Hinduismthe last two are Vanaprastham and Sanyasam. If one goes for Vanaprastham, hischildren cannot understand where he was at the time of death and cannot performanthyakarmas. So the antyakarmas were done only forthose who did not proceed to vanaprastha and had death before that. In kaliyuga, those who are going to Vanaprastha and Sanyasa are very few.So we perform antheyshti for all the diseased. But howAnthyakarmas are performed for ascetics now? Can any learned member clarify about this aspect in brief paragraphs? Gopalakrishnan6-4-24 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Thatha_Patty" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/thatha_patty/1710425626.3689497.1712370596197%40mail.yahoo.com.
