458 Mr. CoLEBROOKE on the Philosophy of the Hindtis, 



although a gift of a piece of ground to an individual does take place, the 

 whole land cannot be given by a monarch, nor a province by a subordinate 

 prince ; but house and field, acquired by purchase and similar means, are 

 liable to gift.* 



Tiie case which will be here next cited, will bring to recollection the 

 instance of the Indian Calanus,i who accompanied Alexander's army, and 

 burnt himself at Babylon after the manner of his country. 



This particular mode of religious suicide by cremation is now obsolete ; 

 as that of widows is in some provinces of India, and it may be hoped will 

 become so in the rest, if no injudicious interference by direct prohibition 

 arouse opposition and prevent tiie growing disuse. Other modes of reli- 

 gious suicide not unfrequently occur; such as drowning, burying alive, 

 falling from a precipice or under the wheels of an idol's car, &c. But they 

 are not founded on the vedas, as that by burning is. 



Self-immolation, in that ancient form of it, is a solemn sacrifice, per- 

 formed according to rites which the vedas direct, by a man desirous of pass- 

 ing immediately to heaven without enduring disease. He engages priests, 

 as at other sacrifices, for the various functions requisite to the performance 

 of tlie rites, being himself the votary for whose benefit the ceremony is 

 undertaken. At a certain stage of it, after wrapping a cloth round a branch 

 of udumhara (^jicus glomerata), which represents a sacrificial stake, and 

 having appointed the priests to complete the ceremony, he chants a solemn 

 hymn, and casts himself on a burning pile wherein his body is consumed. 

 Afterwards, whatever concerns the rite as a sacrificial ceremony, is to be 

 completed by the attendant priests : omitting, however, those matters which 

 specially appertain to the votary, and which, after his death, there is no one 

 competent to perform.! 



In like manner, if tiie principal die by a natural death, after engaging 

 Brdhmanas to co-operate with him in the celebration of certain rites re- 

 quiring the aid of several priests, his body is to be burnt, and his ashes kept 

 to represent him ; and the ceremony is completed for his benefit, according 

 to one opinion, but for theirs according to another. The ashes, it is 

 argued, do not perform the ceremony, but the priests do. Being inanimate, 

 the bones cannot fulfil the prescribed duties peculiar to the principal : 



* Sab. Madh. and C'handa, ad locum. f Calyina. % Mim. 10. 2. 23. 



