On tombs of ancient Egypt have been found inscribed requests, as from those buried beneath them, that passers-by would pray for them. Here and here alone in all the ancient world we first find such praying held to be of any avail to the departed. Later and later it becomes a characteristic doctrine by consequence, of the views of ancient Paganism almost everywhere concerning the dead. In pagan Greece the very chief of the philosophers, and in pagan Rome the poets so view the condition of the departed as to make inevitable the thought of praying to effect some improvement in their condition. In the modern Paganism of India we have the burdensome services of the Srádd'ha or funeral obsequies for the repose of the dead, and for the securing of the efficacy of which it is inculcated that “donations of cattle, land, gold, silver, and other things” should be made by the man himself at the approach of death, or, “if he be too weak, by another in his name.”