Note 115 — XX.

A Hindoo, especially a grown up man, if he die at home is branded as an unrighteous person; many a one otherwise esteemed righteous in his life-time is denounced as a sinful being should he not expire on the banks of the holy stream. In the rári, or inland provinces, through which the Ganges does not flow, people are constrained to breathe their last on the banks of a neighbouring tank and are consequently precluded, from their geographical position, from securing the benefit of this cheap mode of salvation. As a partial atonement for this natural disadvantage, they bring the navel of the dead and throw it into the holy stream, which, in their supposition, is tantamount to the purification of the soul.