5. Funeral rites.
The tribe bury the dead, placing the corpse in the grave with the head to the south. A little rice is buried with the corpse. In Bilāspur the dead are buried in the forest, and the graves of old men are covered with branches of the sāl[3] tree. Then they go to a little distance and make a fire, and pour ghī and incense on it as an offering to the ancestors, and when they hear a noise in the forest they take it to be the voice of the dead man. When a man dies his hut is broken down and they do not live in it again. The bodies of children under five are buried either in the house or under the shade of a banyan tree, probably with the idea that the spirit will come back and be born again. They say that a banyan tree is chosen because it lives longest of all trees and is evergreen, and hence it is supposed that the child’s spirit will also live out its proper span instead of being untimely cut off in its next birth.