Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | Page 359

WHO ARK
LEFT UNBURIED
drought or some other public calamity would
whole country.
319
befall the
Burial is also refused, at least in several provinces, to
persons who die of wounds or eruptive diseases, such as
small-pox or measles, &C. 1 Also to those whose bodies
have white marks on them to pregnant women who die
2
and above all to the many who fall
before child-birth
;
;
victims to tigers. The tragic fate of these last is in a manner
consecrated by those heaps of stones which the traveller
sometimes comes across in his journeys, and which, on the
very spot where they died, cover the remains of those who
have perished so deplorably 3
In consequence of this absurd superstition, when the
country has been a long time without rain, the inhabitants
think the drought is to be attributed to the fact that some
one must have surreptitiously infringed this unwritten
Accordingly the magistrates give immediate orders
law.
that all bodies that have been buried in the course of the
year shall be exhumed, and become food for the birds of
prey.
I myself once had great difficulty in preventing
a Christian cemetery being violated and the remains of
Fortunately, at the
the dead disturbed in this manner.
critical moment, rain came down in torrents, and so the
profanation of the dead was avoided. Otherwise I should
have been forced to yield to the clamour of a senseless
.
mob.
But to return to the subject
in hand,
which has been
rather lost sight of during this long digression.
All Hindus, and particularly Brahmins, have weak con-
stitutions, and in this respect they are greatly inferior to
Brahmins who die of small- pox are burnt in the usual way, at any
The Sudras invariably bury such corpses. Ed.
rate in South India.
2
It is usual amongst Brahmins to take the foetus from the body of
Ed.
a dead pregnant woman, and the latter is burned separately.
3
The bodies even of criminals and suicides were not deprived of
burial by the Jews ; yet there are examples in Holy Scripture which
bear some resemblance to this Hindu custom. Thus Achan, after he
had been stoned, was buried under a heap of stones (Joshua vii. 25, 26),
and Absalom's case is mentioned in 2 Samuel xviii. 17. The king of Ai
was treated in the same way (Joshua viii. 29). Finally, Jeremiah pro-
the
phesies that the wicked Jehoiakim, son of Josiah, should have
Dubois.
burial of an ass (Jeremiah xxii. 19).
1
'
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