Near The
End Of The Room The Coffin, Under A Canopy Of White Silk, Upon
Which There Was A Very Beautiful Arrangement Of Artificial White
Lotuses, Rested Upon Trestles, The Face Of The Corpse Being Turned
Towards The North.
Six priests, very magnificently dressed, sat on
each side of the coffin, and two more knelt in front of a small
temporary altar.
The widow, an extremely pretty woman, squatted near the deceased,
below the father and mother; and after her came the children,
relatives, and friends, who sat in rows, dressed in winged garments
of blue and white. The widow was painted white; her lips were
reddened with vermilion; her hair was elaborately dressed and
ornamented with carved shell pins; she wore a beautiful dress of
sky-blue silk, with a haori of fine white crepe and a scarlet crepe
girdle embroidered in gold, and looked like a bride on her marriage
day rather than a widow.
Indeed, owing to the beauty of the dresses and the amount of blue
and white silk, the room had a festal rather than a funereal look.
When all the guests had arrived, tea and sweetmeats were passed
round; incense was burned profusely; litanies were mumbled, and the
bustle of moving to the grave began, during which I secured a place
near the gate of the temple grounds.
The procession did not contain the father or mother of the
deceased, but I understood that the mourners who composed it were
all relatives. The oblong tablet with the "dead name" of the
deceased was carried first by a priest, then the lotus blossom by
another priest, then ten priests followed, two and two, chanting
litanies from books, then came the coffin on a platform borne by
four men and covered with white drapery, then the widow, and then
the other relatives.
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