We Often Stopped In Such Places To Sleep And Dine.
A Cemetery Near Thalner Is Especially Attractive.
Out of several
mausoleums in a good state of preservation the most magnificent
is the monument of the family of Kiladar, who was hanged on the
city tower by the order of General Hislop in 1818.
Four other
mausoleums attracted our attention and we learned that one of them
is celebrated throughout India. It is a white marble octagon,
covered from top to bottom with carving, the like of which could
not be found even in Pere La Chaise. A Persian inscription on its
base records that it cost one hundred thousand rupees.
By day, bathed in the hot rays of the sun, its tall minaret-like
outline looks like a block of ice against the blue sky. By night,
with the aid of the intense, phosphorescent moonlight proper to
India, it is still more dazzling and poetical. The summit looks
as if it were covered with freshly fallen snow-crystals. Raising
its slender profile above the dark background of bushes, it suggests
some pure midnight apparition, soaring over this silent abode of
destruction and lamenting what will never return. Side by side
with these cemeteries rise the Hindu ghats, generally by the river
bank. There really is something grand in the ritual of burning
the dead. Witnessing this ceremony the spectator is struck with
the deep philosophy underlying the fundamental idea of this custom.
In the course of an hour nothing remains of the body but a few
handfuls of ashes. A professional Brahman, like a priest of death,
scatters these ashes to the winds over a river. The ashes of what
once lived and felt, loved and hated, rejoiced and wept, are thus
given back again to the four elements: to Earth, which fed it
during such a long time and out of which it grew and developed;
to Fire, emblem of purity, that has just devoured the body in
order that the spirit may be rid of everything impure, and may
freely gravitate to the new sphere of posthumous existence, where
every sin is a stumbling block on the way to "Moksha," or infinite
bliss; to Air, which it inhaled and through which it lived, and
to Water, which purified it physically and spiritually, and is
now to receive its ashes into her pure bosom.
The adjective "pure" must be understood in the figurative sense
of the mantram. Generally speaking, the rivers of India, beginning
with the thrice sacred Ganges, are dreadfully dirty, especially
near villages and towns.
In these rivers about two hundred millions of people daily cleanse
themselves from the tropical perspiration and dirt. The corpses
of those who are not worth burning are thrown in the same rivers,
and their number is great, because it includes all Shudras, pariahs,
and various other outcasts, as well as Brahman children under three
years of age.
Only rich and high-born people are buried pompously. It is for
them that the sandal-wood fires are lit after sunset; it is for
them that mantrams are chanted, and for them that the gods are
invoked. But Shudras must not listen on any account to the divine
words dictated at the beginning of the world by the four Rishis
to Veda Vyasa, the great theologian of Aryavarta. No fires for them,
no prayers. As during his life a Shudra never approaches a temple
nearer than seven steps, so even after death he cannot be put on
the same level with the "twice-born."
Brightly burn the fires, extending like a fiery serpent along the
river. The dark outlines of strange, wildly-fantastical figures
silently move amongst the flames. Sometimes they raise their arms
towards the sky, as if in a prayer, sometimes they add fuel to the
fires and poke them with long iron pitchforks. The dying flames
rise high, creeping and dancing, sputtering with melted human fat
and shooting towards the sky whole showers of golden sparks, which
are instantly lost in the clouds of black smoke.
This on the right side of the river. Let us now see what is going
on on the left. In the early hours of the morning, when the red
fires, the black clouds of miasmas, and the thin figures of the
fakirs grow dim and vanish little by little, when the smell of
burned flesh is blown away by the fresh wind which rises at the
approach of the dawn, when, in a word, the right side of the river
with its ghotas plunges into stillness and silence, to be reawakened
when the evening comes, processions of a different kind appear on
the left bank. We see groups of Hindu men and women in sad, silent
trains. They approach the river quietly. They do not cry, and
have no rituals to perform. We see two men carrying something
long and thin, wrapped in an old red rug. Holding it by the head
and feet they swing it into the dirty, yellowish waves of the river.
The shock is so violent that the red rug flies open and we behold
the face of a young woman tinged with dark green, who quickly
disappears in the river. Further on another group; an old man
and two young women. One of them, a little girl of ten, small,
thin, hardly fully developed, sobs bitterly. She is the mother
of a stillborn child, whose body is to be thrown in the river.
Her weak voice monotonously resounds over the shore, and her
trembling hands are not strong enough to lift the poor little
corpse that is more like a tiny brown kitten than a human being.
The old man tries to console her, and, taking the body in his own
hands, enters the water and throws it right in the middle. After
him both the women get into the river, and, having plunged seven
times to purify themselves from the touch of a dead body, they
return home, their clothes dripping with wet.
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