﻿OF THE HINDUS, &C, €43 



• The body of a young cliild under two years oU 

 must not be burnt, but buried. It is decked with 

 wreaths of fragrant flowers, and carried out by the 

 relations, who bury it in a clean spot, saying, ''Nam6! 

 namah J" while a priest chants the song of Yama. 

 *' The offspring of tlie sun, day after day fetching 

 cows, horses, human beings and cattle, is no more 

 satiated therewith than a drunkard with wine." 



When funeral rites are performed for a person who 

 died in a foreign country, or whose bones cannot be 

 found, a figure is made with three hundred and sixty 

 leaves of the Butea, or as many woollen threads dis- 

 tributed so as to represent the several parts of the 

 human body according to a fancied analogy of num- 

 bers ; round the whole must be tied a thong of lea- 

 ther from the hide of a black antelope, and over that 

 a woollen thread ; it is then smeared with barley meal 

 mixed with water, and must be burnt as an emblem 

 of the corpse. 



After the body of the deceased has been burnt in 

 the mode above-mentioned, all who have touched or 

 followed the corpse must walk round the pile, keeping 

 their left hands towards it, and taking care not 

 to look at the lire. They then walk in procession 

 according to seniority, to a river or other running 

 water, and after washing and again putting on their 

 apparel, they advance into the stream. They then 

 ask the deceased's brother in law, or some other per- 

 son able to give the proper answer, " Shall we pre- 

 sent water?'' If the deceased were an hundred years 

 old, the answer must be simply, '* do so :" but if he 

 were not so aged, the reply is, "do so, but do not 

 repeat the oblation." Upon this they all shift' the 

 sacerdotal string to the right shoulder, and looking 

 towards the south, and bemg clad in a single gar- 

 ment without a mantle, they stir the water with the 

 ring finger of the left hand, saying, " waters, purify 

 us." With the same linger of the right liand they 



R 2 throw 



