366 
obsequies- 
The Priests relieve each other during the night, four generally re¬ 
maining at a tifne, They repeat out of the Bali work Malai , as fol¬ 
lows \~yantc ckakk,hawata chanata patsata, ara hang sammasam 
P,hoott,hena„ pat,ha pang paracheekmg kat,hapanyat tantee, See. 
They also give advice to the people assembled. On the day when 
the body is to be consumed, if not before, it is put into a coffin, and 
with much pomp carried to the men, a place near a temple where 
dead bodies are buried. This is adorned with cloth &c., and here 
again games are exhibited. The proper mourning for a Siamese is 
white like that of a Chinese, but the injunction is not always attend¬ 
ed to. On the decease of any of the Royal family the national mode 
of mourning is to shave the head. The Chinese allow the hair to 
grow', on such an occasion, for many months without cutting it.— 
(Davis’ China.) 
The Siamese do not bum papers with characters written on them 
like the Chinese. The priests repeat again portions of the Bali, and 
the relatives set lire to the pile. If the deceased was of the royal 
stock, or a priest, the pile is set on fire by a rocket sent from a dis¬ 
tance along a wire, a practice described by Symes as prevalent in 
Ava. The remains of a Priest were thus consumed while I was at 
Martaban during the Burmese war, and such was the quantity of oil 
and perhaps other inflammables, that the porous earth was soaked with 
them and continued to bum for many days after the ceremony had 
terminated. 
f The Siamese collect the ashes and bones, w r ash them in perfumed 
water, and then either preserve them in vases or else form them with 
paste, lime &c. into busts of Boodd.ha, and place them in temples, or 
they pound them and, mixing them with lime, wash the w alls of a tem¬ 
ple with the liquid. The great raise Scmd or pyramids over the ashes. 
They place cenotaphs and other buildings commemorative of the dead 
in places called Sant,hep,harak, being the karamut of the Malays. 
Here figures and paintings of the deceased are displayed, surrounded 
by the like representations in clay or wood of his dependants, cattle, 
and other animals, birds, &c. This may remined us of the Scythian 
custom of burying such things along with their owner, and it is no 
