Page:History of India Vol 9.djvu/187

 HINDU CUSTOMS LIST SICKNESS AND DEATH 149 their usual habits. There are no anniversaries (of the death) observed. Those who have attended a fu- neral are regarded as unclean; they all bathe outside the town and then enter their houses. The old and infirm who are approaching death, or those who are suffering from some incurable disease, who fear to linger to the end of their days, and through disgust at life wish to es- cape from its troubles, or those who, contemning mor- tal existence, desire release from the affairs of the world and its concerns these per- sons, after receiving a fare- well meal at the hands of their relatives and friends, they place, amid the sounds AN INDIAN REPRESENTATION OF BUDDHA. of music, on a boat which they propel into the midst of the Ganges, and there these persons drown themselves. They think in this way to secure a birth in Heaven. Hardly one out of ten will not carry out his foolish idea. The Buddhist brethren are not allowed to lament or weep for the dead; when the father or mother of a monk dies, they recite prayers, recounting their obliga- tions to them and recalling the past, and they carefully attend to them being now dead. They expect by this to increase the happiness of the departed. As the administration of the government is founded on benign principles, the executive is simple. The fam-