Page:Chinese Life in the Tibetan Foothills.djvu/44

32 The shops which sell other funeral requisites have ready-printed forms for title-deeds of the ground on which burial is made. These are read at the grave and on the third day burned there. In the case of land acquired for the purpose of course it is a copy of the real deed which is used. The position of the coffin in the grave is fixed by the geomancer with chart and compass.

Three days later an offering of food, wine and paper money is brought to the grave 三日伏山 san jih fu shan.

Cranes, deer and a tombstone, all of paper, are taken to the grave; the tombstone is placed where the proper stone will afterwards be erected; the other things are left on each side of the grave to be destroyed by the weather.

The grave is guarded by the sons of the family, but sometimes people are paid to do it. Grave riflers might otherwise strip the dead of their clothing, though the punishment for such crime is death. For the first three nights a straw torch is lighted at the grave; if it is burns out it is a lucky omen, it is unlucky if half is left unburned.

After a few months fresh earth is heaped on the tomb, and every spring or winter afterwards.

A tombstone or ornamental arch is erected to the memory of the dead. In wealthy families the stone is set on the back of a stone tortoise. In the case of officials stone pillars are put up. High officials have stone lions round the grave, to remind them of the stone lions of their yamens. The trees of a graveyard are spoken of as being like the clothing on the body. If they grow well the family will increase and prosper. There is hence trouble when one branch of a family wishes to cut down trees round the ancestral tombs.

Before the graves of very important men are set up statues of men, horses, etc.

Public graveyards are generally on land given for the purpose, and the title-deeds are kept in the yamen for 60 years, after which the graves and tombstones are a sufficient guarantee. In some such public cemeteries small towers 枯骨塔 k'u ku t'a are built as receptacles for dry bones dug up in grave-digging; on them may be the characters 骨⺼相遇 ku jou hsiang yü, flesh and bones meet.