89. Funeral feasts.
An important class of communal meals remaining for discussion consists in the funeral feasts. The funeral feast seems a peculiar and unseasonable observance, but several circumstances point to the conclusion that it was originally held in the dead man’s own interest. He or his spirit was indeed held to participate in the feast, and it seems to have been further thought that unless he did so and ate the sacred food, his soul would not proceed to the heaven or god, but would wander about as an unquiet spirit or meet with some other fate. Many of the lower Hindu castes, such as the Kohlis and Bishnois, take food after a funeral, seated by the side of the grave. This custom is now considered somewhat derogatory, perhaps in consequence of a truer realisation of the fact of death. At a Baiga funeral the mourners take one white and one black fowl to a stream and kill and eat them there, setting aside a portion for the dead man. The Gonds also take their food and drink liquor at the grave. The Lohārs think that the spirit of the dead man returns to join in the funeral feast. Among the Telugu Koshtis the funeral party go to the grave on the fifth day, and after the priest has worshipped the image of Vishnu on the grave, the whole party take their food there. After a Panka funeral the mourners bathe and then break a cocoanut over the grave and distribute it among themselves. On the tenth day they go again and break a cocoanut, and each man buries a little piece of it in the earth over the grave. Among the Tameras, at the feast with which mourning is concluded, a leaf-plate containing a portion for the deceased is placed outside the house with a pot of water and a burning lamp to guide his spirit to the food. On the third day after death the Kolhātis sometimes bring back the skull of a corpse and, placing it on the bed, offer to it powder, dates and betel-leaves, and after a feast lasting for three days it is again buried. It is said that the members of the Lingāyat sect formerly set up the corpse in their midst at the funeral feast and sat round it, taking their food, but the custom is not known to exist at present. Among the Bangalas, an African negro tribe, at a great funeral feast lasting for three days in honour of the chief’s son, the corpse was present at the festivities tied in a chair.[230]