The earth-goddess appears again when the child enters upon manhood, for at Brahman marriages in India, the bridegroom still says to the bride, "I am the sky, thou art the earth, come let us marry" (421. 29).
And last of all, when the ineluctable struggle of death is over, man returns to the "mother-earth"--dust to dust. One of the hymns of the Rig-Veda has these beautiful words, forming part of the funeral ceremonies of the old Hindus:--
"Approach thou now the lap of Earth, thy mother, The wide-extending Earth, the ever-kindly; A maiden soft as wool to him who comes with gifts, She shall protect thee from destruction's bosom.
"Open thyself, O Earth, and press not heavily; Be easy of access and of approach to him, As mother with her robe her child, So do thou cover him, O Earth!" (421. 31).
The study of the mortuary rites and customs of the primitive peoples of all ages of the world's history (548) reveals many instances of the belief that when men, "the common growth of mother-earth," at last rest their heads upon her lap, they do not wholly die, for the immortality of Earth is theirs. Whether they live again,--as little children are often fabled to do,--when Earth laughs with flowers of spring, or become incarnate in other members of the animate or inanimate creation, whose kinship with man and with God is an article of the great folk-creed, or, in the beautiful words of the burial service of the Episcopal Church, sleep "earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope of the resurrection," all testifies that man is instinct with the life that throbs in the bosom of Earth, his Mother. As of old, the story ran that man grew into being from the dust, or sprang forth in god-like majesty, so, when death has come, he sinks to dust again, or triumphantly scales the lofty heights where dwell the immortal deities, and becomes "as one of them."
With the idea of the earth-mother are connected the numerous myths of the origin of the first human beings from clay, mould, etc., their provenience from caves, holes in the ground, rocks and mountains, especially those in which the woman is said to have been created first (509. 110). Here belong also not a few ethnic names, for many primitive peoples have seen fit to call themselves "sons of the soil, _terrae filii_, _Landesleute_."