Vedic people believed that, after death, the soul of the deceased remained on earth for thirteen days, till the funeral rites of the body it inhabited were completed. And then the soul crossed the mythical Vaitarni River to the land of the ancestors, pitralok. Pitralok was beyond the constraints of time and space. Three generations of ancestors remained in pitralok. And generations beyond either came back to earth for their next life, or attained moksha, liberation from the cycle of rebirths.
