Note 134 — Volume II. (continued 2)

Death ceremonies. 14. The dying person is removed into the open air before death.134 The ceremonies are performed in the ordinary way. After cremation a stalk of the tall reed-like grass (jhurai) is planted on the edge of a tank. This is apparently like the vessel (ghant) hung on a pîpal tree, intended as an abode for the spirit (pret) during the time which elapse before the funeral ceremonies are complete.135 During the next ten days the man who fired the pyre goes daily to the tank and pours ten vessels (lota) of water over the grass-stalk. When the mourners return from the pyre they sit and lament the deceased for a short time, and each touches with his big toe a little vessel of water which is laid in the court-yard. For ten days mourning goes on. The man who fired the pyre cooks his food in an earthen vessel without salt, eats only once a day out of a leaf platter (dauna), and the relations do not eat pân or turmeric or put oil on their heads. The chief mourner goes about with a knife and brass lota in his hands to keep off ghosts. On the day after the cremation the women of the family go to the tank. The dead man’s mother walks in front of the widow, and all sing songs of mourning. When they arrive at the tank the widow washes the red lead off the parting of her hair and pours ten handfuls of water on the stalk of grass which embodies the spirit of her husband. All the women do the same, and the same ceremony is performed daily for ten days. On the tenth day (daswân) all the male relations shave at the tank and get a Brâhman to offer up three balls (pinda) of barley flour, which are thrown into the water in the name of the deceased. They then return to the house, where the funeral priest (Mahâpâtra, Mahâbrâhman) attends and receives the bed, clothes, and vessels of the dead man, and one and-a-quarter rupee in cash from the person who fired the pyre. These, it is believed, will pass on for the use of the deceased in the next world (svarga).136 “How could he get on in the next world without these things?” is what they say; but of a future in which felicity awaits the good and retribution meets the evil-doer they have only the very vaguest idea.137 On that day his brother-in-law binds a turban on the head of the dead man’s successor, and pân and betel-nut are distributed and the clansmen fed. On this day, to mark her abandonment of married life, the widow floats away (serwa dena) her little box which contains the red lead for the parting of her hair (sendûra) and forehead spangles into the water.