Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 7.djvu/185

Rh (Sophora glauca), which were brought to the spot where the corpse was lying. The mother of the dead child then withdrew one of its hands from the putkūli, and the boy placed the grass and twig in the hand, and limes, plantains, rice, jaggery, honey-comb, and butter in the pocket of the putkūli, which was then stitched with needle and thread in a circular pattern. The boy's father then took off his son's putkūli, and replaced it so as to cover him from head to foot. Thus covered, the boy remained outside the hut till the morning of the morrow, watched through the night by near relatives of himself and his dead bride. [On the occasion of the funeral of an unmarried lad, a girl is in like manner selected, covered with her putkūli from head to foot, and a metal vessel filled with jaggery, rice, etc., to be subsequently burnt on the funeral pyre, placed for a short time within the folds of the putkūli. Thus covered, the girl remains till next morning, watched through the dreary hours of the night by relatives. The same ceremony is performed over the corpse of a married woman who has not borne children, the husband acting as such for the last time, in the vain hope that the woman may produce issue in heaven.] The corpse was borne away to the burning-ground within the shola, and, after removal of some of the hair by the mother of the newly wedded boy, burned, with face upwards, amid the music of the Kota band, the groans of the assembled crowd squatting on the ground, and the genuine grief of the nearest relatives. The burning concluded, a portion of the skull was removed from the ashes, and handed over to the recently made mother-in-law of the dead girl, and wrapped up with the hair in the bark of the tūd tree (Meliosma pungens). A second buffalo, which, properly speaking, should have been slain before