It is strange, and really more than strange, that not only should this important and prominent side of the ancient religion of the Hindus have been ignored, but that of late its very existence should have been doubted. I feel obliged, therefore, to add a few words in support of what I have said just now of the supreme importance of this belief in and this worship of ancestral spirits in India from the most ancient to the most modern times. Mr. Herbert Spencer, who has done so much in calling attention to ancestorship as a natural ingredient of religion among all savage nations, declares in the most emphatic manner,[277] "that he has seen it implied, that he has heard it in conversation, and that he now has it before him in print, that no Indo-European or Semitic nation, so far as we know, seems to have made a religion of the worship of the dead." I do not doubt his words, but I think that on so important a point, Mr. Herbert Spencer ought to have named his authorities. It seems to me almost impossible that anybody who has ever opened a book on India should have made such a statement. There are hymns in the Rig-Veda addressed to the Fathers. There are full descriptions of the worship due to the Fathers in the Brâhma_n_as and Sûtras. The epic poems, the law books, the Purâ_n_as, all are brimful of allusions to ancestral offerings. The whole social fabric of India, with its laws of inheritance and marriage,[278] rests on a belief in the Manes--and yet we are told that no Indo-European nation seems to have made a religion of the worship of the dead. The Persians had their Fravashis, the Greeks their εἲδωλα, or rather their θεοὶ πατρῷοι and their δαἱμονες, ὲσθλοὶ, ὲπιχθόνιοι, φὑλακες θνητῶν ὰνθρὡπων; ὁἳ ῥα φυλἁσσουσἱν τε δἱκας καὶ σχἑτλια ἔργα, ὴἑρα ἑσσἁμενοι πἁντη φοιτῶντες επ' αἷαν, πλουτοδόται (Hesiodi Opera et Dies, vv. 122-126);[279] while among the Romans the _Lares familiares_ and the _Divi Manes_ were worshipped more zealously than any other gods.[280] Manu goes so far as to tell us in one place (III. 203): "An oblation by Brâhmans to their ancestor transcends an oblation to the deities;" and yet we are told that no Indo-European nation seems to have made a religion of the worship of the dead. Such things ought really not to be, if there is to be any progress in historical research, and I cannot help thinking that what Mr. Herbert Spencer meant was probably no more than that some scholars did not admit that the worship of the dead formed the whole of the religion of any of the Indo-European nations. That, no doubt, is perfectly true, but it would be equally true, I believe, of almost any other religion. And on this point again the students of anthropology will learn more, I believe, from the Veda than from any other book.