The art of embalming, as known to the Siamese, is extremely imperfect, notwithstanding that it has been practised from very ancient times. Its actual state is characteristic of that general ignorance of the ornamental, as well as of the useful arts of civilized life, which I have already hinted at on several occasions.
The process is for the most part left to the relations of the deceased, who call in the assistance of the more experienced.
After washing the body with water, the first step is to pour a large quantity of crude mercury into the mouth. Persons of the highest rank alone, however, can have recourse to a material so expensive. The others substitute honey in its stead, but it is said with a less favourable result. The body is now placed in a kneeling posture, and the hands are brought together before the face, in the attitude of devotion. Narrow strips of cloth are then bound tightly round the extremities, and the body is compressed in a similar manner. The object of the ligatures is to squeeze the moisture out of the body. They act also in preserving the required posture, and with this object the more flexile tendons of the extremities are divided. In this posture the body is next placed in an air-tight vessel of wood, brass, silver, or gold, according to the rank of the deceased. A tube, or hollow bamboo, inserted into the mouth of the deceased, passes through the upper part of the box, and is conducted through the roof of the house to a considerable height. A similar bamboo is placed in the bottom, and terminates in a vessel placed under it to receive the draining off from the body. If the deceased is of the rank of a prince, the sordes thus collected is conveyed with great formality and state, in a royal barge, highly ornamented, to be deposited at a particular part of the river below the city. That collected from the body of the king is put into a vessel, and boiled until an oil separates, which oil is carefully collected, and with this they, on certain occasions, (as when his descendants and those of his family go to pay their devotions to his departed spirit), anoint the singular image called Sema, usually placed in the temple after his death.
Notwithstanding the precaution of using the tubes and the tight box, the odour, it is said, is often most offensive. In a few weeks, however, it begins to diminish, and the body becomes shriveled and quite dry.
The body thus prepared by this rude process is, at the proper period, brought forth to be burnt, the relations having in the mean time made every necessary arrangement for the solemn occasion. Early in the morning a number of priests are assembled at the house of the deceased; having received robes of yellow cloth, and been feasted, they repeat prayers in the Pali language, after which the body is carried forth to be burned. The priests receive the body as it approaches the temple, and conducting it towards the pile, repeat a verse in the Pali language, which has been thus interpreted to me:
Eheu! mortale corpus,
Ut fumus hic nunc ascendit, sic et
Animus tuus ascendat in cœlum[16].
After the body has been destroyed, the ashes, or rather the small fragments of bone which remain, are carefully collected, and the use that is made of them is somewhat singular. The priests are again called in; prayers are again repeated in the Pali language, and various requisite ceremonies are performed, after which the ashes which had been collected after combustion, are reduced to a paste with water, and formed into a small figure of Buddha, which being gilded, and finished by the priests, is either placed in the temple, or preserved by the friends of the deceased.
This last ceremony is attended with considerable expense, and, therefore, the poorer orders, when unable to engage priests for its performance, keep the ashes of their relations by them, until they are in a condition to have it carried into effect in a becoming manner.
It must be confessed, that in matters of this sort, the Siamese shew the greatest regard to the memory of their relations and ancestors. Where death and its dread apparatus are thus brought daily home to the feelings,—where the mind is accustomed to view the disgusting and humiliating phenomena that attend the last scene of mortality, it might be thought that a stupid insensibility, if not scornful indifference, would be the general result. We have no reason to believe that such is the case with the Siamese. The care and attention they have bestowed upon the remains of their relations, seem but to endear their memory the more to them. The fear of death is, besides, of that nature, that neither the most deliberate reason, nor the most obtuse feeling, can lay it altogether aside. On the minds of the multitude more especially, this fear operates strongly, and produces effects in proportion to their degree of intelligence. Where there is already a strong tendency towards superstition, this bias is still more heightened, and there are perhaps few nations more strongly imbued with this sentiment than the Siamese; and, in general, all the tribes of Mongol origin. With them judicial astrology still holds the rank of the most important of sciences, and is cultivated with the most scrupulous attention. Its pretended results are required on all important occasions, either of a public or a private nature. Nor are the most gross and revolting superstitions confined to the vulgar, as the following anecdote respecting the present Pra-klang, Suree-wong Montree, will shew.