Page:The Tibetan Book of the Dead (1927).djvu/76

26 a funeral pyre, it may be cremated. In some remote districts earth burial is customary; and it is commonly employed everywhere when death has been caused by a very contagious and dangerous disease, like small-pox for example. Otherwise, Tibetans generally object to earth burial, for they believe that when a corpse is interred the spirit of the deceased, upon seeing it, attempts to re-enter it, and that if the attempt be successful a vampire results, whereas cremation, or other methods of quickly dissipating the elements of the dead body, prevent vampirism. Sometimes, too, as among the Hindus, corpses are cast into rivers or other bodies of water. In the case of the Dalai Lāma and the Tashi Lāma, and of some very great man or saint, embalming is practised; and the corpse, in a way somewhat resembling the ancient Egyptian embalming process, is packed in a box of marsh salt, usually for about three months, or until the salt has absorbed all the watery parts of the corpse. Then, after the corpse is well cured, it is coated with a cement-like substance made of clay, pulverized sandal-wood, spices, and drugs. This adheres and hardens; and all the sunken or shrivelled parts of the body, such as the eyes, cheeks, and stomach, having been rounded out by it to their natural proportions, a very Egyptian-like mummy is produced. Finally, when thoroughly dried and then covered with a paint made of dissolved gold, the mummy is set up like an image in a sort of Tibetan Westminster Abbey.

At Shigatze, the seat of the Tashi Lāma, there are five such funereal temples. With their double roofs, resplendent with gold, they resemble the palaces or royal shrines of China. In size and embellishment they differ, in accordance with the rank and wealth of the mummies occupying them, some being inlaid with gold, some with silver. Before these enshrined mummies prayer is offered up, incense burnt, and elaborate rituals are performed, as in the ancestral cults of the Chinese and Japanese.

The four Northern Buddhist methods of disposing of a corpse correspond to those mentioned in various of the sacred