NOTES ON THE ETHNOLOGY OF TIBET. 729 



ropes from the rafters and re(iuest the lamas to come read the sacred books. 

 A few days later the body is cavrit-d to the corpse cutter's place, where it is tied to 

 a stake and the Hesh cut oti' and given to dogs to eat. This is called a " terrestrial 

 burial." The bones are crushed in a stone mortar, mixed with tsamba, made into 

 balls, and also given to the dogs or thrown to the vultures, and this latter mode of 

 disposing of them is called a " celestial burial." Both these methods are considered 

 highlv desirable. . 



Tiie poor dead are buried in the streams, the corpse being simply thrown m. This 

 is not an esteemed mode of burial. The bodies of lamas are burnt and cairns erected 

 over their remains. (Jour. Roy. Asiat. Soc, n. s., xxiii, pp. 231-232; Conf. Land of 

 the Lamas, pp. 81, and 286-287.)* 



Georgi {oj). cit., p. 443) gives some interesting details, which I have 

 not seen noticed elsewhere. He says : 



Mos estetiam, ut Summorum Lhamarum, aliorumque paucorum cadavera velsan- 

 dalo quodcum aloes li-no nounulli confundunt, comburantur, vel balsamo condita 

 sacri's in loculis reponantur. * ^ * Vulgaris <iuo.iue ac fere quotidiana consul- 

 tudo in Civibus, houestisque hominibns sepeliendis ist haec servatur. Lhania, vel 

 Traba quivis aninam, nt somniaut, e sunimo capite cadaveris ad hue tepescentis 

 prinium educit. Educit autem hoc pacto cutem verticis digitis arete prehendam, et 

 coirncratam tam celeri ac vehement! succussionis impetu attrahit, ut eam uuo momento 



subsifire, ac crepitarefaciat. Tum vero, inqmuut, anima defuncti erupisse creditur. 

 Capt. Samuel Tiu'ner (Embassy, p. 260) says: 



It is the custom of Tibet to preserve entire the mortal remains of their sovereign 

 lama only; every other corpse is either consumed by fire or given to be the pro- 

 miscuous food of beasts and birds of prey. As soon as life has left the body of a 

 lama it is placed upright, sitting in an attitude of devotion, his legs being folded 

 before him, with the instep resting upon each thigh and the soles of the teet turned 

 upward. " ' * The right hand is rested with its back upon the thigh, with 

 the thumb bent across the palm. The left arm is bent and held close to the bo.ly, 

 the hand being open and the thumb at right angles with the tingers touching the 

 point of the shoulder. This is the attitude of abstracted meditation. 



If we seek for mortuary customs similar to those of the Tibetans we 

 have not far to go to and them among other Buddhist people, who 

 may probably have seen in the custom of having their dead bodies 

 fed to birds or beasts a supreme act of charity, for which Gautama 

 Buddha himself set the example when, in several of his births, prior to 

 his reaching Buddhahood, as related in the Jataka, he gave his body 

 as food to hungry tiger whelps or other famished animals. 



In Siam it is not uncommon for a person to direct that his body after 

 death shall be cut up and fed to vultures and crows (Sir John Bow- 

 ring, The Kingdom and People of Siam, i, p. 122), and in Korea it is cus- 

 toutary, after the bodies of lamas have been consumed by fire, to mix 

 the ashes with rice flour and feed them to birds. The "towers of 

 silence" of the Parsees in which the bodies of the dead are devoured 

 by birds is another analogous method, but the reasons which have called 

 this custom into existence with them, are, of course, quite different.t 



* For a vivid description of a " terrestrial burial," see Annales de la Propagation 

 de la Foi, 1865, p. 289; Conf. also Georgi, Alph. Tibet., p. 441 et seq. 



tThe Kafirs put their dead in boxes and expose them on the tops of high moun- 

 tains (Sir P. Lumsden, Jour, Anth. Inst, iii, p. 361. 



