Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | Page 526

THE FINAL RITES
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.sets fire to it, places it upon the hollow of the
deceased's stomach, and performs on this lighted bratty
the sacrifice of homam. Then follows a most extraordinary
ceremony, which at the same time is certainly a very dis-
gusting one, the chief mourner placing his lips successively
to all the apertures of the deceased's body, addressing to
each a mantram appropriate to it, kissing it, and dropping
on it a little ghee. By this ceremony the body is supposed
to be completely purified.
The chief mourner then places
a small piece of gold money in the mouth, and everybody
present in turn deposits in it a few grains of soaked rice.
The near relatives then approach and deprive the corpse
of all the jewels with which it is adorned, and even of its
shroud and then it is covered with small splinters of wood
which are sprinkled with pancha-gavia. The chief mourner
walks round the funeral pyre three times, and pours upon
it some water that is allowed to trickle from an earthen
vessel which he carries on his shoulder, and which he after-
wards breaks on the head of the deceased.
This last act and that which follows formally constitute
him the dead man's heir l Then a lighted torch is brought
to him.
Before he takes it, however, it is customary for
him to show his grief by uttering mournful cries. In dis-
playing his grief he rolls upon the ground, strikes his breast
fiercely with his hand, and makes the air resound with his
cries.
Following his example, all present also weep bitterly,
or pretend to do so, holding themselves clasped one to
cow-dung,
;
.
The offering to deceased fathers at the sraddha is the key to the
Hindu law of inheritance. It furnishes the principal evidence of kin-
1
'
on which the title to participate
power of making wills being recognized
in the patrimony is founded, no
in Manu, or any other authorita-
tive code of Hindu Jurisprudence.
The object of such sraddhas is
.
.
two-fold, viz. first, the re-embodying of the soul of the deceased in some
kind of form after cremation of the corpse, or simply the release of the
subtile body which is to convey the soul away.
Secondly, the raising
ship,
.
him from the regions of the atmosphere, where he would have otherwise
to roam for an indefinite period among demons and evil spirits to a
particular heaven or region of bliss.
There he is eventually half deified
among the shades of departed kinsmen. Manu, however, is not clear
as to the precise effect of the sraddha.
He merely states that its per-
formance by a son or the nearest male kinsman is necessary to deliver
a father from a kind of hell called Put, and that the spirits of the departed
{Pitris) feed on the offered food.'
Momer-Williams.