Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 5, 1894.djvu/44

36 the corpse was burnt, heap up the remains of the burnt bones, and pour thereon water and oil-seeds, and break an earthen pot. They eat that night in the deceased's house. Cooked rice and incense are offered to the spirit of the deceased.

But whenever funds are wanting to perform the Karmantram ceremony as above, the strange procedure is this. No death-message is sent. The corpse is wept over, and then carried to the local "God's Acre" on an arrangement like a ladder. A grave is dug, and the corpse is placed therein. The son or heir throws in some earth, and the grave is filled up. The Karmantram ceremony may be performed any time within the lifetime of the son or heir, whenever he has sufficient money for it. A corpse without kith is never treated to this ceremony. A Monday is fixed for the postponed performance. Relatives are informed by message. They come, and are fed under a shed, much the same as is enacted for the Wadder marriage. In the evening, a bier, followed by all the relatives, is carried with music to the spot where the corpse was buried. The deceased's wife's brother digs up the corpse, removes the skull, which he washes and smears with sandal-wood powder and spices. This man, the brother-in-law of deceased, seats himself on the bier, holding the skull in his hand, and is carried back to the shed in front of deceased's house. No music. The skull is set down, and all the relatives weep and mourn over it until the next day at noon. The following twenty-four hours are given over to drunken revelry. Then the brother-in-law again sits on the bier, skull in hand, and is carried back to the grave, with music. The son or heir of deceased there burns the skull and breaks an earthen pot. The relatives go home, bathe, and feast together. This custom obtains also amongst the Pullers, who are, doubtless, amongst the earliest existing inhabitants of the country, hills or plains.

Eating and feasting in presence of the dead we find in