Hindu Feasts, Fasts and Ceremonies/Chapter 7
7. Hindu Funeral Rites
A Hindu funeral, as it is now performed, has undergone many changes from what it was originally meant by the ancient sages of India to be, and as such deserves handling in a critical way. Every religion has its own mode of conducting its funeral rites. The Hindu mode is that the son or the sons or the nearest agnatic kindred must perform these parting ceremonies. As soon as all hope of life is given up, the family priest summons all the sons to sit by the side of the dying father. To avoid confusion, let us suppose the dying party to be the father, and that his sons perform the rites. Certain donations are first given to the Brahmans. A lighted lamp, a vessel full of sesamum seed, a vessel filled with oil, a milch cow with its calf—these four must be given, or if a person is too poor to buy a cow, he must at least give a couple of rupees. These donations are considered to be most effective in washing away the sins of the dying man; and, as a corollary, he who receives the gifts is supposed to inherit the sins of the dying person. Hence it is very difficult to find persons to receive the donations voluntarily; and to induce the acceptance of them, large fees have sometimes to be offered. The men who accept the bribes are Brahmans of very inferior social scale, who appear with hideous faces, which proclaim that the average lustre of their caste has left them long ago. Then succeeds the sacred bath to purify the soul and atone for the sins of the dying person—it is called the Kaveri or samudra snana, as the person dying happens to be near a river or the sea—and fees are paid to Brahmans, who are supposed to perform the ablutions. The fee for each bath is generally six annas and a quarter. In rich families fees are given for a thousand such baths. As it is considered very respectable to receive this kind of fee, a good number of high class Brahmans is always available for this purpose.
After giving the gifts enumerated above, the son or sons of the dying man sit near his head and chant hymns from the Vedas to the dictation of the family priest. This is a most solemn occasion. The weeping and crying and other outward manifestations of mourning cease. The purport of the prayer is that all the sins of the dying man may be absolved and that he may find a happy abode in Heaven. When the dying man actually expires, the prayer ceases and all the relations go into the street mourning and wailing, facing the south—this amounts to an appeal to the God of Death—whose quarters are supposed to be in that direction—to show mercy to their dead relation. Then the whole household assembles round the dead person, and incessant weeping and wailing proceed for three or four hours. The males, however, do not give vent to their sorrow in this way, and generally keep themselves aloof. Some of the old-school women also come, having learned by heart several mourning ditties which they repeat, and make a pretence of weeping. If any of these old women have any insinuations to make, they take this opportunity of making them, and quarrels spring up—of course, after the mourning days are over. When the time for the removal of the corpse to the burning ground has arrived, the body has to be washed and decorated. The religious rites for the preparation of the sacred fire to ignite the funeral pyre have to be performed near the corpse. The daughters and other close female relatives of the dead man bring water in pots and wash and decorate the body, while the sons perform the religious ceremony and prepare the sacred fire. In the meantime the construction of the bier goes on outside the house. When everything is ready, the leave-taking ceremony takes place. This consists in the dead man’s palm being rubbed with as many two-anna pieces as there are close relatives, and these pieces being then presented to those relatives, who keep them as long as they live. When this is concluded, the corpse is placed on a bier of green palm leaves, the grandsons standing ready with lighted torches to accompany the bier to the burning ground. Young women stay at home but elderly ones always accompany the corpse. Arrived at the burning ground, elaborate religious ceremonies are gone through, at the end of each of which a large fee is paid to religious Brahmans, rich people sometimes spending a large sum of rupees on these funeral obsequies in the belief that any amount so expended always adds to the meritoriousness of the spender. After these rites the body is placed on the pyre and the fire lighted. The sons of the deceased sit down and are clean shaved, and after that bathe and return. home with the other mourners. The sons and the wife of the dead man are the chief mourners. This almost ends the first day’s rites.
On the second day, the rites commence very early in the morning. The funeral pyre is examined and the remains of the deceased are collected, while prayers are said and rites performed, milk and cocoanut water being sprinkled over the ashes to appease the thirst of the dead man’s soul; and other oblations in the form of fried rice, pulses and dry cakes are offered. The funeral party then returns home. There a room is set apart, and in a corner of it a stone to represent the dead man’s body is set up, and before noon every day certain rites are performed, which end in the offering of rice-balls to the soul of the dead man. These rice-balls are then carried out and thrown away in a pond or river. This mode of offering continues till the twelfth day, when the dead man is considered to have taken his place in Heaven along with the other departed relatives. This twelfth-day ceremony is called the Sapindikarana, meaning, adding the newly dead to those who have already departed, and not less than thirty-two donations, varying in value according to the pecuniary position of the parties, are offered. The first, second, tenth, eleventh and twelfth day ceremonies are the most sacred and tedious ones, but they are all gone through by the Hindus. The thirteenth day concludes the funeral rites, and is therefore called Subhasvikarana, meaning, resuming the usual mode of happy life after the mourning days are over. On this day the house is blessed by the priest, presents are given by the fathers-in-law to the sons who were engaged in these rites, and betel-leaf chewing, which was discontinued for the thirteen days, is resumed at night.
Let us now turn to the festive portion—if that term can be aptly applied to such a sorrowful occasion—of the funeral rites. The ancient Hindu sages have wisely ruled that certain close relatives should supply the mourning house with food on the mourning days. These relatives are the fathers or fathers-in-law (or the nearest male relatives in that direction) of the sons who perform the funeral rites. If the person who died has seven sons, the duty of supplying the mourning house with food falls on the fathers-in-law of all the seven sons, if they are all married, or, if not, on those of the sons who are married. The outside supply of food is necessary for the first, second, tenth, eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth days. If there are six different parties to undertake this kind of supply, they do it in turns. If their number is insufficient, some of these days are left out and only important days, as the first, tenth and the thirteenth, are chosen, or any one or two of these days. So far as the rule goes, it is a wise provision, for when the house goes into mourning, its comforts in the direction of feeding will be neglected unless some outside relation is chosen for the occasion. This duty of supply is called sar vaikkiradu, which means the supplying of food with pepper water; only simple food is meant, and that was the rule in ancient days. But the modern Hindu custom is to supply a grand feast with all the modern art of which Hindu cookery is capable. All kinds of fruits, sweets and varieties of rice-preparations are offered to the mourners. One father-in-law vies with another in his competition to give grander and grander dinners on the successive days, and to crown the horror, quarrels sometimes spring up among some of these idiotic relations that due and proper invitation was not sent to such and such a party to be present at the dinner. Did the sages ever mean that their simple ruling should be thus abused by modern civilisation? The sooner the old and orthodox custom is resumed the better. On the night of the thirteenth day presents in the shape of new cloths, rings and money are given to the boys and girls of the deceased by their relatives. A new cloth is worn by almost all and the mourning proper becomes a thing of the past. The monthly ceremonies are kept up and the annual ceremony closes the career of the dead man in his relationship with the world of the dead, and he becomes a mane or pitri.
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