Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | Page 391

APOSTROPHIZING THE DEAD
Why hast
me
351
What wrong have I done
leave me in the prime of my
thou forsaken
thou shouldst thus
Had I not for thee all the fondness of a faithful
life ?
Have I not always been virtuous and pure ? Have
wife ?
Who will bring
I not borne thee handsome children ?
thee, that
?
?
Who will take care of them hereafter ? Was
not diligent in all the duties of the household ? Did I
not sweep the house every day, and did I not make the
Did I not ornament the floor
floor smooth and clean ?
with white tracery ? Did I not cook good food for thee ?
Didst thou find grit in the rice that I prepared for thee ?
Did I not serve up to thee food such as thou lovedst, well
seasoned with garlic, mustard, pepper, cinnamon, and other
spices ?
Did I not forestall thee in all thy wants and
wishes ? What didst thou lack whilst I was with thee ?
Who will take care of me hereafter ?
And so on. At the end of each sentence uttered in
a plaintive chanting tone, she pauses to give free vent to
her sobs and shrieks, which are also uttered in a kind of
rhythm. The women that stand around join her in her
lamentations, chanting in chorus with her. Afterwards,
she addresses the gods, hurling against them torrents of
blasphemies and imprecations. She accuses them openly
of injustice in thus depriving her of her protector.
This
scene lasts till her eloquence becomes exhausted, or till
her lungs are wearied out and she is no longer capable of
giving utterance to her lamentations. She then retires
to take rest for a while, and to prepare some new phrases
against the time when the body is being prepared for the
them up
I
'
funeral pyre.
The more vehement the expression of a woman's grief,
and demonstrative her phrases, the more
the more eloquent
apparently genuine her contortions on such occasions, so
much the more is she esteemed a woman of intelligence
and education. The young women who are present pay
the most minute attention to all that she says or does
and if they observe anything particularly striking in her
flights of rhetoric, in her attitudes, or in any of her efforts
to excite the attention of the spectators, they carefully
treasure it in their memory, to be made use of should
a similar misfortune ever happen to themselves. If a wife
;