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162 CREMATION OF THE DEAD book iii
duty.
They always proceed chanting some prayers to their god, and calling out
Ram! Ram ! and, while carrying the body, there is someone who sounds a
small bell to give notice to the living to pray for the deceased. The
body having arrived at the margin of the river or tank, it is plunged
into the water, and afterwards burnt.1 This is done in three
different ways, as I shall describe in the following chapter. According
to the wealth of the deceased, more or less sandalÂwood or other
scented wood is mingled with the ordinary wood which is collected for
burning the corpse.
But
the idolaters burn not only dead bodies; their cruel superstition goes
further, for they also burn the bodies of the living. They make scruple
about killing a serpent, and even a bug, yet they regard it as a highly
meritorious action to cause a living woman to be burnt in the fire
together with the body of her deceased husband.2
CHAPTER IX
How the women burn themselves with the bodies of their deceased husbands in India.
It is
also an ancient custom among the idolaters of India that on a man dying
his widow can never remarry ; as soon, therefore, as he is dead she
retires to weep for her husband, and some days afterwards her hair is
shaved off, and she despoils herself of all the ornaments with which
her person was adorned ; she removes from her arms and legs the
bracelets which her husband had given her, when espousing her, as a
sign that she was to be submissive and bound to him, and she remains
for the rest of her life without any consideration, and worse than a
slave, in the place where previously she was mistress.3 This miserable condition causes her to detest
1 For the custom in Kathiawar see Mrs. S. Stevenson, Rites of the Twice-born, 149.
2
See a curious case of self-inhumation of a -water-carrier woman
attendant with her mistress, mother of the Rao (Mrs. M. Postans, Cuteh, 72 ft).
3
In Gujarat the widow on the day of her husband's death breaks her
bracelets, and has her head shaved on the tenth day; but a young
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