The moment life is fled the high priest bends over the corpse with his hands folded on his breast and repeats a prayer. After which the near female relatives indulge in the most dismal howls and shrieks as expressions of their grief and lamentation. The body is then bathed by the priests, perfumed, decked with flowers, and placed on a temporary bier or litter. This is borne along through the chief thoroughfares, preceded by men who carpet with certain pieces of cloth the entire way; women follow, howling and weeping and casting dust on their heads. The funeral pyre, formed of dried wood, is three or four feet high and over six feet long; the corpse is laid on it, and over it is poured oil, clarified butter, and flowers made of fragrant woods. The priests stand around, sprinkle the body with holy water, and repeat a number of prayers which very clearly point to the mystery which enfolds all animate and inanimate life, within and without, and express earnest hopes that the body now about to be consumed may not draw down the soul to enter another body again. The nearest relative then applies the fire and the body is consumed. They who watch the fire repeat to themselves long passages from the Shastras and the Puranas on the vanity of human life and the deathless nature of the soul, after which they purify themselves before returning home. Eleven days after death the Shrada, or purificatory ceremonies, are performed by the heir, and in his absence the next nearest relative; then every month for a year, and lastly on the anniversary of his death.
Brahmans are held unclean for ten days after the death of a relative, the military caste for twelve, the mercantile for fifteen, and the Sudra for thirty. Among the Hindoos the body is burnt, except only in case of infants under two years, when it is buried. The "Shrada" is a ceremony very much like mass performed in the Roman Catholic Church for the souls of the dead who are in purgatory. Prayers are offered by the high priest and the nearest relatives, accompanied with gifts and offerings of rice, flowers, oil, and water, in order to free the deceased soul from a purificatory abode in which it is held, and to enable it to ascend to the heaven where its progenitors are thought to be united to the universal Soul.
The worship of the Brahmans and the high-caste Hindoos, though complicated by trivialities, is in its essence very simple and pure. The Brahmans do not themselves worship the idols in the temples, although they encourage the inferior castes and races to do so. Every act of a Brahman's life is stamped with a religious character, even as every breath that he draws is held to be a part of that "Divine Soul" that exists in the heart of all beings.
As the Brahman priests accommodated their religious beliefs to suit the popular mind, so have the Roman Catholic missionaries and priests effected a compromise between Hindooism and Christianity in India, and Eastern Christianity has assumed features as foreign to the sublime teachings of Christ as demon- and serpent-worship are foreign to the pure and natural religion of the Vèdas.
It is only by examining the existences of all the different races and layers of populations, and the mingling of so many and such conflicting religions, that we can rightly understand the India of to-day with her hydra-headed creeds, dogmas, and castes.
FOOTNOTES:
[27] A species of palm-leaf dried and stitched together, much used all over Hindostan in roofing houses and sheds.
[28] Most of the high-caste Hindoo women cultivate this plant for the purpose of dyeing their nails and finger-tips. The dye is prepared by bruising the leaves and moistening them with a little lime-water. This mixture is then applied to the nails, tips of the fingers, palms of the hands, and sometimes even to the soles of the feet, which in a short time become dyed of a reddish-orange color. The stain remains on the skin until it wears off.
[29] A "Guru" is a spiritual guide, a Brahman ecclesiastic, invested with the power of attending births, deathbeds, marriages, and settling all such questions as effect Hindoo caste and all its duties and obligations. A Guru is generally an ascetic of peculiar sanctity, and is often worshipped as an incarnate deity. This office descends from father to son. The Gurus comprise a very large and influential body of men, occupying the chief cities of India, wielding a despotic power over the people, as their curse is dreaded by all ranks and conditions of people.
[30] The Bhats and Charans, the bards and genealogists of these tribes, are remarkable for their power of reciting from memory whole epics describing the birth, exploits, and death of the various Bhil chiefs. They will also devote themselves to death or to receive the most cruel mutilations in order to keep a promise, accomplish a vow, recover a debt, or to obtain any end which might be secured by inspiring others with superstitious reverence and dread. A Bhat of Viramghaw in 1806 put his little daughter, a beautiful girl of seven years old, to death by decapitation, and with her blood, which he carried in an earthen vessel, he sprinkled the gate of the Malliah Rajah's castle, and thus compelled him to pay a debt to the Gaikwar for which he had become security.