Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | Page 528

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DUTIES DEVOLVING ON THE HEIR
betel-leaves are distributed among those present, and
every one who has a right to them is presented with the
dasa-dana, after which all return to the door of the deceased's
house, though no person enters the house because it is still
Finally, everybody washes his feet and returns
to his own house.
Nevertheless, for the heir another ceremony still remains,
which consists in filling a little chatty with earth and
sowing nine kinds of grain, namely rice, barley, gingelly
seeds, and the five kinds of pulse.
He waters them so
that they may quickly sprout and be used for certain cere-
monies which follow.
thing of the very highest impor-
tance that he must do that day is to place in the habitation
of the deceased a small vessel full of water, over which he
hangs a thread tied at one end to the ceiling L
This thread
is intended to serve as a ladder to the prana, that is to say,
to the life-breath which animated the body of the deceased,
and which by this thread is enabled to descend and drink
the water during the ten days which follow.
And in order
that the prana may have something to eat as well as to
drink, a handful of rice is placed each morning by the side
of the vessel.
It is not until all these ceremonies and formalities have
been accomplished that the people of the house are allowed
to take any food.
For they have neither eaten nor drunk
anything since the moment that the deceased gave up the
ghost.
All these practices and those which I will briefly
detail in the following chapter are most rigorously observed.
The omission of the most minute of them would cause
no less scandal than the omission of the more important.
Nevertheless poverty is allowed as an excuse for neglecting
those which entail large expenditure. For instance, most
Brahmins would be quite unable to make the dasa-dana,
or ten gifts.
It is to be observed that these practices, however super-
stitious they may appear, clearly denote that the Hindus
have preserved a most distinct idea of the immortality of
that they recognize the corruption of human
the soul
nature and the necessity of resorting to means of purifica-
defiled.
A
.
;
1
This
is
nut done in some parts of South India.
Ed.