Page:Wanderings of a Pilgrim Vol 2.djvu/479

 you see the ceremony really performed it is very painful: nevertheless, a sort of absurdity was mixed with it in my mind, as "stir him up with the long pole" flashed across my memory. A group of relatives were sitting by the river-side, watching the ceremony; on its conclusion they will bathe and return to their homes.

The kapālīl below]-krīyā, a ceremony among Hindūs, is, that when a dead body is burning, and nearly reduced to ashes, the nearest relation breaks the skull with the stroke of a bamboo, and pours ghī (clarified butter) into the cavity. Hence kapāl-kriyāyā?] karna, to think intensely, to beat or cudgel one's brains.

The charpāī on which the corpse had been carried, being reckoned unclean, had been thrown into the river, and the broken lota that had contained ghī was at its side. The scene was reflected in the Ganges. From the quantity of wood and ghī consumed the departed must have been a rich man: the relatives of the very poor scarcely do more than scorch the body, and throw it into the river, where it floats swollen and scorched—a horrible sight.

"The burning of the body is one of the first ceremonies the Hindūs perform for the help of the dead in a future state. If this ceremony have not been attended to, the rites for the repose of the soul cannot be performed. If a person be unable to provide wood, cloth, clarified butter, rice, water-pans, and other things, besides the fee for the priest, he must beg among his neighbours. If the body be thrown into the river, or burnt, without the accustomed ceremonies, as is sometimes the case, the ceremonies may be performed over an image of the deceased made of koosh[)u] grass. Immediately after death the attendants lay out the body on a sheet, placing two pieces of wood under the head and feet; after which they anoint the corpse with clarified butter, bathe it with the water of the Ganges, put round the loins a new garment, and another over the left shoulder, and then draw the sheet on which the body lies over the whole. The heir-at-law next bathes himself, puts on new garments, and boils some rice, a ball of which and a lighted brand he puts to the mouth of the deceased, repeating incantations. The pile