Kota stirred uneasily. “Hark!” she said, listening, “what do they sing there without:—what song?”
Somewhere in the village a chant was sounding, the words as yet indistinct, but becoming gradually louder, till a little procession passed Gokarna’s house, uttering these words, over their heavy and sorrowful burden:
“Call on Rama! Call to Rama!
Oh, my Brothers, call on Rama!
For this dead
Whom we bring,
Call aloud to mighty Rama!”
“Rama!” echoed Kota, tremulously. “God of death!—Alas! Alas! That is the omen.”
“It is surely an evil omen that a funeral should pass the house of the new-born. Yet Rama is a god. He must be honored. Let the secret name of the child be ‘Ramasarman.’ There are the four, holy Brahmanic syllables. ‘Ramasarman.’ Say it with me, Kota.”
And the mother, with tears in her eyes and in her voice, repeated with her husband the words that gave her first-born a secret name of death. And when this ceremony was over, receiving the baby once more into her arms, she wept over it, quietly and persistently, throughout the afternoon.