Is using 301 redirects from multiple dead pages to my index page OK?

Terrified of innocently incurring google wrath

[futuresky]

I've got around 10 dead pages which currently show a 404 error. These all have links from other sites so I don't want to loose any pagerank benefits. I could place a link on my 404 error page which would link to my index page, but I'm not sure whether I'd keep the pagerrank beneits. I've read that a 301 redirect is probably the best way to keep link/pagerank benefits (and recommended by google from what I understand) but wondering if putting a 301 redirect from 10 dead pages back to my index page would incur any problems from google. In other words, should I only do this with one dead page, rather than 10?

[bcc1234]

Should not be a problem.

I had a site with about 1.1k pages on two domains (really messy).
Moved the site to a new domain and made half of those pages do a 301 to the new home page and another half to the corresponding pages on the new domain.

The new domain got into index after one update.
It had PR5 right off the start.

[futuresky]

Thanks bcc1234, that's great news. Now can get my site tidied up and sleep peacefully.