Mohun—I must do what you bid me do, hitherto I remained behind a mountain, now I shall be without protection.
Next morning, the rite of Boyetarni being performed, preparations are made to carry the sick man to the river side: all the nearest relations and friends assemble, and the patient, then in the full possession of his senses, is brought outside and laid on the chárpoy; his forehead is daubed with the mud of the Ganges, and a toolsee plant is placed about his head. He is told to repeat the name of his guardian deity, and one man going up to him says, let's go to visit the mother Gunga, at which he nods; this serves as a signal for lifting the charpoy, and putting it on the shoulders of four strong persons of equal size. The heart-rending scene that ensues hereupon among the females cannot be adequately described. Their falling on the ground, their loud and affecting cries, the tearing of their dishevelled locks, the wringing of their breast, the contortions of their bodies, all produce a mournful scene of anguish and despair which my feeble pen can hardly pourtray.
The sick man is thus carried, perhaps a distance of two or three miles, in a state of consciousness[115] exposed to all the dangers of inclement weather, fully aware of his approaching end, the carriers exchanging their shoulders every now and then, and shouting out every five minutes, "Hurry, Hurrybole, Gunga Narain, Brahma, Shiva Ráma," until they reach their destination, which, in Calcutta, is Nimtollah Ghaut, on the banks of the Hooghly.[116] When the chárpoy on which the sick man is borne is placed on the ground, some one calls out to the patient to see the sacred stream, which he does in a state of mind that can be better imagined than described. On opening his eyes he beholds a dark, gloomy scene, the ghastliness of which is enough to strike horror into the heart of the most callous and indifferent. Here a dying man suffering from the convulsive agony of acute pain, is, perhaps, gasping for breath, there a fellow mortal is taken in a hurry to the very edge of the holy water to breathe out the last flicker of life; to deepen the gloom perhaps a corpse borne on a Hindoo hearse is just brought to the Ghaut amidst the vociferous cries of "Hurry, Hurrybole," which is a significant death-warrant.
"'Tis too horrible;
The weariest and most loathed earthly life
Which age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
Can lay on nature, is a paradise
To what we fear of death?"
Can imagination conceive a more dismal, ghastly scene? But religion has crowned the practice with the weight of national sanction, and thus deadened the finer sensibilities of our nature. Sad as this picture is, the most staunch advocate of liberalism can hardly expect to escape such a fate. To a person accustomed to such scenes, death, and its concomitant agony, loses half its terrors. How many Hindoos are annually hurried to their eternal home by reason of this superstitious, inhuman practice? Instances are not wanting to corroborate the truth of this painful fact. Persons entrusted with the care and nursing of a dying man at the burning Ghaut soon get tired of their charge, and rather than administer to his comfort, are known to resort to artificial means, whereby death is actually accelerated. They unscrupulously pour the unwholesome, muddy water of the river down his already choked throat, and in some cases suffocate him to death. "These are not the ebullient flashes from the glowing caldron of a kindled imagination," but undeniable facts founded on the realities of life.
The process of Hindoo antarjal or immersion is another name for suffocation. Life is so tenacious, especially in what the Hindoos call old bones, or aged persons, that I have seen some persons brought back home after having undergone this murderous process nine or ten times in as many days. The patient, perhaps an uncared-for widow cast adrift in the world, retaining the faculty of consciousness unimpaired, is willing to die rather than continue to drag on a loathsome existence, but nature would not readily yield the vital spark. In spite of repeated murderous processes, the apparently dying flicker of life would not become extinct. In the case of an aged man, the return home after immersion is infamously scandalous, but in that of an aged widow the disgrace is more poignant than death itself. I have known of an instance in which an old widow was brought back after fifteen immersions, but being overpowered by a sense of shame she drowned herself in the river after having lived a disgraceful life for more than a year. As I have observed elsewhere, no expression is more frequent in the mouth of an aged widow than the following: "Shall I ever die?" Scarcely any effort has ever been made to suppress or even to ameliorate such a barbarous practice, simply because religion has consecrated it with its holy sanction.
But to return to the thread of my narrative, the sick man dies after a stay of four days at the Ghaut, suffering perhaps the most excruciating pangs and agony generally attendant on a deat-bed. The names of his gods are repeatedly whispered in his ears, and the consolations of religion are offered him with an unsparing hand, in order to mitigate his sufferings, and if possible to brighten his last hours. The corpse is removed from the resting place to the burning Ghaut, a distance of a few hundred yards, and preparations for a funeral pile are speedily made. The body is then covered with a piece of new cloth and laid upon the pyre, the upper and lower part of which is composed of firewood, faggots, and a little sandalwood and ghee to neutralize the effects of effluvia. The Marooyapora Brahmin,[117] (an outcast) reads the formula, and the son or the nearest of kin sets fire to the pile; the body is consumed to ashes, but the navel remaining unburnt is taken out and thrown into the river. Thus ends the ceremony of cremation; the son putting a few jars of holy water on the pile, bathes in the stream, and returns home with his friends, changing his old garment for new white clothes, called uttary, on one end of which is fastened an iron key to keep off evil spirits. It is worthy of remark here, that providence is so propitious to us in every respect that in a few hours the son becomes reconciled to his unhappily altered circumstances caused by the loss of his father; instead of bemoaning his loss in a despondent frame of mind, he is soon awakened to a sense of his new responsibility.
On reaching the gate of the house, all persons touch fire, and putting neem leaves and a few grains of kalie (a kind of pulse) into the mouth, cry out as before "Hurrybole, Hurrybole" and enter the house. The lamentation of the females inside the house, which was suppressed for a while through sheer exhaustion, is instantly renewed at the sound of "Hurrybole," as if fresh fuel were added to the flame, and every voice is drowned in the overwhelming surge of grief. Their melancholy strain, their pointed, pathetic allusion to the bereavement, the cadence of their plaintive voices, the utter dejection of their spirit, their loud, doleful cries reverberating from one side of the house to the other, the beating of their breasts, and the tearing of their hair, are too affecting not to make the most obdurate shed tears of sorrow.
The son, from the hour of his father's death to the conclusion of the funeral ceremony, is religiously forbidden to shave, wear shoes, shirts, or any garment other than the piece of white cloth, his food being confined to a single meal consisting only of atab rice, khasury dhall (a sort of inferior pulse) milk, ghee, sugar and a few fruits, which must be cooked either by his mother or his wife; at night he takes a little milk, sugar and fruits. This course of regime lasts ten days in the case of a Brahmin, and thirty-one days in that of a Soodra.[118] Here the advantages of the privileged class are twofold; (1), he has to observe the rigid discipline for ten days only; (2), he has ample excuse for small expenditure at the funeral ceremony on the score of the shortness of time. This austere mode of living for a month in the case of a Kayast, by far the most aristocratic and influential portion of the Hindoo population, serves as a tribute of respect and gratitude to the memory of a departed father. As the country is now in a transition state, a young educated Hindoo does not strictly abide by the above rule, but breaks it privately in his mode of living, of which the inmates of the family only are cognisant. He repudiates publicly what he does privately. Thus the outer man and the inner man are not exactly one and the same being, he dares not avow without what he does within, in short, he plays the hypocrite. But an orthodox Hindoo observes the rule in all its integrity, he is more consistent if not more rational, he does not play a double game, but conforms to the rules of his creed with scrupulous exactness.