Last Monday an Indian prince died at Etretat, Bapu Sahib Khanderao
Ghatay, a relation of His Highness, the Maharajah Gaikwar, prince of
Baroda, in the province of Guzerat, Presidency of Bombay.
For about three weeks there had been seen walking in the streets about
ten young East Indians, small, lithe, with dark skins, dressed all in
gray and wearing on their heads caps such as English grooms wear. They
were men of high rank who had come to Europe to study the military
institutions of the principal Western nations. The little band consisted
of three princes, a nobleman, an interpreter and three servants.
The head of the commission had just died, an old man of forty-two and
father-in-law of Sampatro Kashivao Gaikwar, brother of His Highness, the
Gaikwar of Baroda.
The son-in-law accompanied his father-in-law.
The other East Indians were called Ganpatrao Shravanrao Gaikwar, cousin
of His Highness Khasherao Gadhav; Vasudev Madhav Samarth, interpreter
and secretary; the slaves: Ramchandra Bajaji, Ganu bin Pukiram Kokate,
Rhambhaji bin Fabji.
On leaving his native land the one who died recently was overcome with
terrible grief, and feeling convinced that he would never return he
wished to give up the journey, but he had to obey the wishes of his
noble relative, the Prince of Baroda, and he set out.
They came to spend the latter part of the summer at Etretat, and people
would go out of curiosity every morning to see them taking their bath at
the Etablissment des Roches-Blanches.
Five or six days ago Bapu Sahib Khanderao Ghatay was taken with pains
in his gums; then the inflammation spread to the throat and became
ulceration. Gangrene set in and, on Monday, the doctors told his young
friends that their relative was dying. The final struggle was already
beginning, and the breath had almost left the unfortunate man's body
when his friends seized him, snatched him from his bed and laid him on
the stone floor of the room, so that, stretched out on the earth, our
mother, he should yield up his soul, according to the command of Brahma.
They then sent to ask the mayor, M. Boissaye, for a permit to burn the
body that very day so as to fulfill the prescribed ceremonial of the
Hindoo religion. The mayor hesitated, telegraphed to the prefecture to
demand instructions, at the same time sending word that a failure to
reply would be considered by him tantamount to a consent. As he had
received no reply at 9 o'clock that evening, he decided, in view of the
infectious character of the disease of which the East Indian had died,
that the cremation of the body should take place that very night,
beneath the cliff, on the beach, at ebb tide.
The mayor is being criticized now for this decision, though he acted as
an intelligent, liberal and determined man, and was upheld and advised
by the three physicians who had watched the case and reported the death.
They were dancing at the Casino that evening. It was an early autumn
evening, rather chilly. A pretty strong wind was blowing from the ocean,
although as yet there was no sea on, and swift, light, ragged clouds
were driving across the sky. They came from the edge of the horizon,
looking dark against the background of the sky, but as they approached
the moon they grew whiter and passed hurriedly across her face, veiling
it for a few seconds without completely hiding it.
The tall straight cliffs that inclose the rounded beach of Etretat and
terminate in two celebrated arches, called “the Gates,” lay in shadow,
and made two great black patches in the softly lighted landscape.
It had rained all day.
The Casino orchestra was playing waltzes, polkas and quadrilles. A rumor
was presently circulated among the groups of dancers. It was said that
an East Indian prince had just died at the Hotel des Bains and that the
ministry had been approached for permission to burn the body. No one
believed it, or at least no one supposed that such a thing could occur
so foreign was the custom as yet to our customs, and as the night was
far advanced every one went home.
At midnight, the lamplighter, running from street to street,
extinguished, one after another, the yellow jets of flame that lighted
up the sleeping houses, the mud and the puddles of water. We waited,
watching for the hour when the little town should be quiet and deserted.
Ever since noon a carpenter had been cutting up wood and asking himself
with amazement what was going to be done with all these planks sawn up
into little bits, and why one should destroy so much good merchandise.
This wood was piled up in a cart which went along through side streets
as far as the beach, without arousing the suspicion of belated persons
who might meet it. It went along on the shingle at the foot of the
cliff, and having dumped its contents on the beach the three Indian
servants began to build a funeral pile, a little longer than it was
wide. They worked alone, for no profane hand must aid in this solemn
duty.
It was one o'clock in the morning when the relations of the deceased
were informed that they might accomplish their part of the work.
The door of the little house they occupied was open, and we perceived,
lying on a stretcher in the small, dimly lighted vestibule the corpse
covered with white silk. We could see him plainly as he lay stretched
out on his back, his outline clearly defined beneath this white veil.
The East Indians, standing at his feet, remained motionless, while one
of them performed the prescribed rites, murmuring unfamiliar words in a
low, monotonous tone. He walked round and round the corpse; touching it
occasionally, then, taking an urn suspended from three slender chains,
he sprinkled it for some time with the sacred water of the Ganges, that
East Indians must always carry with them wherever they go.
Then the stretcher was lifted by four of them who started off at a slow
march. The moon had gone down, leaving the muddy, deserted streets in
darkness, but the body on the stretcher appeared to be luminous, so
dazzlingly white was the silk, and it was a weird sight to see, passing
along through the night, the semi-luminous form of this corpse, borne
by those men, the dusky skin of whose faces and hands could scarcely be
distinguished from their clothing in the darkness.
Behind the corpse came three Indians, and then, a full head taller than
themselves and wrapped in an ample traveling coat of a soft gray color,
appeared the outline of an Englishman, a kind and superior man, a friend
of theirs, who was their guide and counselor in their European travels.
Beneath the cold, misty sky of this little northern beach I felt as if
I were taking part in a sort of symbolical drama. It seemed to me that
they were carrying there, before me, the conquered genius of India,
followed, as in a funeral procession, by the victorious genius of
England robed in a gray ulster.
On the shingly beach the four bearers halted a few moments to take
breath, and then proceeded on their way. They now walked quickly,
bending beneath the weight of their burden. At length they reached the
funeral pile. It was erected in an indentation, at the very foot of
the cliff, which rose above it perpendicularly a hundred meters high,
perfectly white but looking gray in the night.
The funeral pile was about three and a half feet high. The corpse was
placed on it and then one of the Indians asked to have the pole star
pointed out to him. This was done, and the dead Rajah was laid with his
feet turned towards his native country. Then twelve bottles of kerosene
were poured over him and he was covered completely with thin slabs
of pine wood. For almost another hour the relations and servants kept
piling up the funeral pyre which looked like one of those piles of wood
that carpenters keep in their yards. Then on top of this was poured the
contents of twenty bottles of oil, and on top of all they emptied a bag
of fine shavings. A few steps further on, a flame was glimmering in a
little bronze brazier, which had remained lighted since the arrival of
the corpse.
The moment had arrived. The relations went to fetch the fire. As it was
barely alight, some oil was poured on it, and suddenly a flame arose
lighting up the great wall of rock from summit to base. An Indian who
was leaning over the brazier rose upright, his two hands in the air, his
elbows bent, and all at once we saw arising, all black on the immense
white cliff, a colossal shadow, the shadow of Buddha in his hieratic
posture. And the little pointed toque that the man wore on his head even
looked like the head-dress of the god.
The effect was so striking and unexpected that I felt my heart beat as
though some supernatural apparition had risen up before me.
That was just what it was--the ancient and sacred image, come from the
heart of the East to the ends of Europe, and watching over its son whom
they were going to cremate there.
It vanished. They brought fire. The shavings on top of the pyre were
lighted and then the wood caught fire and a brilliant light illumined
the cliff, the shingle and the foam of the waves as they broke on the
beach.
It grew brighter from second to second, lighting up on the sea in the
distance the dancing crest of the waves.
The breeze from the ocean blew in gusts, increasing the heat of the
flame which flattened down, twisted, then shot up again, throwing out
millions of sparks. They mounted with wild rapidity along the cliff and
were lost in the sky, mingling with the stars, increasing their number.
Some sea birds who had awakened uttered their plaintive cry, and,
describing long curves, flew, with their white wings extended, through
the gleam from the funeral pyre and then disappeared in the night.
Before long the pile of wood was nothing but a mass of flame, not
red but yellow, a blinding yellow, a furnace lashed by the wind. And,
suddenly, beneath a stronger gust, it tottered, partially crumbling as
it leaned towards the sea, and the corpse came to view, full length,
blackened on his couch of flame and burning with long blue flames:
The pile of wood having crumbled further on the right the corpse turned
over as a man does in bed. They immediately covered him with fresh wood
and the fire started up again more furiously than ever.
The East Indians, seated in a semi-circle on the shingle, looked out
with sad, serious faces. And the rest of us, as it was very cold, had
drawn nearer to the fire until the smoke and sparks came in our faces.
There was no odor save that of burning pine and petroleum.
Hours passed; day began to break. Toward five o'clock in the morning
nothing remained but a heap of ashes. The relations gathered them up,
cast some of them to the winds, some in the sea, and kept some in a
brass vase that they had brought from India. They then retired to their
home to give utterance to lamentations.
These young princes and their servants, by the employment of the most
inadequate appliances succeeded in carrying out the cremation of their
relation in the most perfect manner, with singular skill and remarkable
dignity. Everything was done according to ritual, according to the rigid
ordinances of their religion. Their dead one rests in peace.
The following morning at daybreak there was an indescribable commotion
in Etretat. Some insisted that they had burned a man alive, others that
they were trying to hide a crime, some that the mayor would be put
in jail, others that the Indian prince had succumbed to an attack of
cholera.
The men were amazed, the women indignant. A crowd of people spent the
day on the site of the funeral pile, looking for fragments of bone in
the shingle that was still warm. They found enough bones to reconstruct
ten skeletons, for the farmers on shore frequently throw their dead
sheep into the sea. The finders carefully placed these various fragments
in their pocketbooks. But not one of them possesses a true particle of
the Indian prince.
That very night a deputy sent by the government came to hold an inquest.
He, however, formed an estimate of this singular case like a man of
intelligence and good sense. But what should he say in his report?
The East Indians declared that if they had been prevented in France from
cremating their dead they would have taken him to a freer country where
they could have carried out their customs.
Thus, I have seen a man cremated on a funeral pile, and it has given me
a wish to disappear in the same manner.
In this way everything ends at once. Man expedites the slow work of
nature, instead of delaying it by the hideous coffin in which one
decomposes for months. The flesh is dead, the spirit has fled. Fire
which purifies disperses in a few hours all that was a human being; it
casts it to the winds, converting it into air and ashes, and not into
ignominious corruption.
This is clean and hygienic. Putrefaction beneath the ground in a closed
box where the body becomes like pap, a blackened, stinking pap, has
about it something repugnant and disgusting. The sight of the coffin as
it descends into this muddy hole wrings one's heart with anguish. But
the funeral pyre which flames up beneath the sky has about it something
grand, beautiful and solemn.