“They shall cover the surface of the grave with ashes or cow-dung.”—(Fargard VIII.)
“Let the worshippers of Mazda here bring the urine wherewith the corpse-bearers shall wash their hair and their bodies.”—(Fargard VIII. See, also, p. 201 of this volume.)
In describing the funerals of the Eskimo, Gilder says: “The closing ceremony was a most touching one. After ‘Papa’ had returned from the grave, Armow went out of doors and brought in a piece of frozen something that it is not polite to specify, further than that the dogs had entirely done with it, and with it he touched every block of snow on a level with the beds of the igloo. The article was then taken out of doors and tossed up in the air, to fall at his feet; and by the manner in which it fell he could joyfully announce that there was no liability of further deaths in camp for some time to come.”—(“Schwatka’s Search,” Gilder, p. 234.)
“The Africans have an evil spirit called ‘Abiku,’ who takes up his abode in the human body.” This spirit is believed to cause the death of children. “If the child dies, the body is thrown on the dirt-heap.”—(“Fetichism,” Baudin, p. 57.)
There is also a purification of the soul of the dying by the same peculiar methods. In Coromandel,[68] the dying man is so placed that his face will come under the tail of a cow; the tail is lifted, and the cow excited to void her urine. If the urine fall on the face of the sick man, the people cry out with joy, considering him to be one of the blessed; but if the sacred animal be in no humor to gratify their wishes, they are greatly afflicted.
“The inhabitants of the coast of Coromandel carried those of their sick who were on the point of death, as a last resource, to the back of a fat cow, whose tail they twisted to make her urinate; if the cow’s urine spread over the whole face of the patient, it was a very good sign to the dirty rascals.”—(Paullini, pp. 80, 81.)
With equal solicitude does the Hottentot medicine-man follow the remains of his kinsmen to the grave, aspersing with the same sacred liquid the corpse of the dead and the persons of the mourners who bewail his fate.[69]
At Hottentot funerals, “two old men, the friends or relations of the deceased, enter each circle and sparingly dispense their streams upon each person, so that all may have some; all the company receive their water with eagerness and veneration. This being done, each steps into the hut, and taking up a handful of ashes from the hearth, comes out by the passage made by the corpse, and strews the ashes by little and little upon the whole company. This, they say, is done to humble their pride.”—(Kolbein, p. 401.)
“It is a pity that men in a savage state should take delight in doing that which is nasty, but such is the fact. It is a very common custom for the tribe, or that portion of it who are related to the one who has died, to rub themselves with the moisture that comes from the dead friend. They rub themselves with it until the whole of them have the same smell as the corpse.”—(“Aborigines of Victoria,” Smyth, vol. i. p. 131.) But in a footnote he adds that some of the Australians will not touch a dead body with the naked hand.
In the mortuary ceremonies of the Encounter Bay tribe (South Australians), “the old women put human excrement on their heads,—the sign of deepest mourning.”—(Idem, vol. i. p. 113.)