Note 102 — Volume II. (continued 2)

Death ceremonies. 14. No one is allowed to die in the house.102 People who die of cholera and small-pox and unmarried persons are buried; all others are cremated. They have regular cemeteries in the neighbourhood of their villages. The corpse is cremated on the edge of an adjoining stream. Very often, however, cremation is very carelessly performed, and in epidemics corpses are exposed in the jungle to be eaten by wild animals. Next day the ashes are collected and floated away (serwâna) by throwing them into the water. On the third day the relation who fired the pyre goes with the clansmen to the river, and they shave one another. That day a date is fixed for the funeral feast, when they assemble at the house of the deceased, and a little oil and turmeric are given them, which they rub into their bodies. From the day of the funeral the women of the family place some food on the road by which the corpse was removed.103 This is discontinued from the night preceding the date of the funeral feast. On that day a cupful of food and a cup of oil are taken by the oldest woman of the family to the cremation place and thrown into the water. When she comes home a goat is sacrificed in the house in the name of the deceased, and in the evening the clansmen are fed on the flesh of the victim boiled with rice.