Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India.djvu/280

BANT seventh, or ninth day. Once a year — generally in October — a ceremony called agelū is performed for the propitiation of ancestors.

From a detailed account of the Bant death ceremonies, I gather that the news of a death is conveyed to the caste people by a Holeya. A carpenter, accompanied by musicians, proceeds to cut down a mango tree for the funeral pyre. The body is bathed, and laid out on a plank. Clad in new clothes, it is conveyed with music to the burning-ground. A barber carries thither a pot containing fire. The corpse is set down near the pyre and divested of the new clothes, which are distributed between a barber, washerman, carpenter, a Billava and Holeya. The pyre is kindled by a Billava, and the mat on which the corpse has been lying is thrown thereon by a son or nephew of the deceased. On the third day the relations go to the burning-ground, and a barber and washerman sprinkle water over the ashes. Some days later, the caste people are invited to attend, and a barber, washerman, and carpenter build up on the spot where the corpse was burnt a lofty structure, made of bamboo and areca palm, in an odd number of tiers, and supported on an odd number of posts. It is decorated with cloths, fruits, tender cocoanuts, sugarcane, flowers, mango leaves, areca palm flowers, etc., and a fence is set up round it. The sons and other relations of the deceased carry to the burning-ground three balls of cooked rice (pinda) dyed with turmeric and tied up in a cloth, some raw rice dyed with turmeric, pieces of green plantain fruit, and pumpkin and a cocoanut. They go thrice round the structure, carrying the various articles in trays on their heads, and deposit them therein. The relations then throw a little of the coloured rice into the structure, and one of the caste