Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 5 1887.djvu/249

Rh on seven times seven, or the forty-ninth day, to get the deceased to heaven. If poor, this ceremony is dispensed with; but in rich houses it is performed on every seventh day till the forty-ninth is reached.

At night a small platform is erected at the door surmounted by a table at which the priests recite their prayers. Rice is scattered, and libations made. This is known as the dispensation of supplies to hungry ghosts who have no relatives to take care of them. In the event of death from opium swallowing, drowning, hanging, throat- cutting, or child-birth, a fire is made by the Buddhist priests, at which chains and bricks are heated; holding these in their hands and teeth they step on red-hot bricks, thus enabling the spirit to be born again or to transmigrate, and, in consequence, deterring it from returning to molest its former friends. In some cases a cauldron of boiling oil is employed. The priests rushing into the room seize soil or anything lying about, and fling it into the cauldron, saying that they have caught the soul of the dead man, and have roasted it, thus preventing its return in order to seek some one to die and take its place.

After one hundred days, a wealthy family will hold another mass for the release of the soul from hell.

During the seventh month of each year a letter must be transmitted by the agency of fire to the departed containing gold and silver paper-money.

As the day selected for burial approaches, a geomancer is engaged to select a lucky spot. During the period occupied by his search he has to be maintained by his employers, and some are thus kept for months and even for years.

This selection of a spot for burial is considered extremely important as affecting the future fortunes of the survivors, and in cases in which misfortune is experienced, the remains will be dug up and transferred to a more favourable locality.

The coffin while awaiting burial is kept in the hall. In the city of Shin Kwan, in the north of the province of Kwangtung, an odd belief exists that, the shape of the city resembling that of a gourd, the dead represent the seeds. Were the gourd deprived of its seeds, say the