Page:The Land of the Veda.djvu/515

Rh her tongue with the sacred water, or puts the mud of the Ganges on her lips.

The sun sinks low in the heavens; the shades of night commence to fall, and the place begins to look very dreary, for the wolves and jackals which abound will come there to drink when it is dark; and the son, it may be a mere youth, timid and superstitious, thinks his mother is a long time dying. But he cannot immerse her till the heart ceases to beat; so he watches on, and wets her lips again. And there they are, alone, far from house or friends, in “the valley and shadow of death” together. At length the last gasp is over, and his final duty is ready. He goes outside into the water, and, taking her by the heels, draws her down into the river, and floats her out till the water is above his own breast, and then with a final push he sends her from him as far as he can into the river, and turns to the shore and makes his way home as fast as possible. She is left to her fate, no more to be thought of or protected. To her son, who thus deserts her—to her husband, who left her to die without his presence—it is nothing that the body of the mother and wife is rolling along with the current in the darkness, and that, most probably, within a few hours, and within a few miles of her dwelling, it will strand upon a sand-bar, and be discovered by the vultures, who, with the jackals, will fiercely contend together during the night as they feast upon it, or that the sun of the next day will shine on the gory and naked skeleton of the wife and the mother to whom, by their gloomy religion, even the rest of the grave is thus denied!