Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 6.djvu/379

Rh the portion of the ground — one cannot call it a field —which he last cultivated."] The only wood used for the pyre is that of the mango, and of Pongamia glabra. Fresh, green branches are cut and used. No dry wood is used, except a few twigs to light the fire. Were any one to ask those carrying a body to the burning-ground the name of the deceased or anything about him, they would be very angry. Guns are fired while the body is being carried. Everything a man has, his bows and arrows, his tangi, his dagger, his necklaces, his reaping-hook for cutting paddy, his axe, some paddy and rice, etc., are burnt with his body. I have been told in Kolakotta that all a man's money too is burned, but it is doubtful if it really ever is — a little may be. A Kolakotta Gōmango told me "If we do not burn these things with the body, the Kulba will come and ask us for them, and trouble us." The body is burned the day a man dies. The next day, the people of the family go to the burning place with water, which they pour over the embers. The fragments of the bones are then picked out, and buried about two feet in the ground, and covered over with a miniature hut, or merely with some thatching grass kept on the place by a few logs of wood, or in the floor of a small hut (thatched roof without walls) kept specially for the Kulba at the burning-place. An empty egg-shell (domestic hen's) is broken under foot, and buried with the bones. It is not uncommon to send pieces of bone, after burning, to relations at a distance, to allow them also to perform the funeral rites. The first sacrificial feast, called the Limma, is usually made about three or four days after the body has been burnt. In some places,it is said to be made after a longer interval. For the Limma a fowl is killed at the burning-place, some rice or other grain is cooked, and, with the fowl, eaten by the