METHODS OF TREATING THE DEAD.
It will be necessary for my purpose to give a short description
of the chief modes of disposing of the dead, and to quote a very
few examples of each practice. In instancing such examples, I
will as much as possible confine myself to my note-books of the
last four years, and by so doing the matter will not only be more
likely to possess novelty, but it will have been based upon the
late observations of our distinguished travellers and possess
authenticity.
The first method of disposal which I will mention is Exposure,
which might be better described as no burial at all. The Colchians
and Phrygians at one time hung the dead bodies upon the limbs of
trees,[44] and some of the Indians of the Plains of North America
to the present day do little else, since they expose their dead,
after a rude bandaging, upon platforms erected upon the top of tall
poles. Many ancient nations, however, purposely exposed their dead
to the predatory instinct of animals. For instance, the Syrcanians
abandoned their dead to wild dogs.[45] The ancient Ethiopians threw
their dead into the water, to be devoured by aquatic animals.[46]
The Parsees, as far back as 400 B.C., and for an untraced time
previously, exposed their deceased friends upon high gratings to
feed birds of prey, and such 'towers of silence' are in use up to
the present day. Dr. Aveling informs me that in India they are
accustomed to carry the body to the top of a hill and place it upon
a stone slab, returning for it in order to bury it when the bones
are picked clean. Disturbances have frequently taken place of late
between the Hindoos and Parsees owing to this practice, for the
vultures and other birds often let fall portions of the body during
their flight into the gardens of the former. And speaking still of
our own times, the Hindoos often expose their dead by the banks of
their sacred river to the attacks of the river monsters; some of
them even, when fuel is scarce, cast the partly burnt body into the
Hooghly. Some Kaffir tribes also remove the dead out of sight to
spots in the bush, where they are devoured by wild beasts.[47]
[44] Frazer.
[45] Spondanus.
[46] Frazer.
[47] 'Iron.'
Casting the body into the deep is another form of exposure, with
the reservation that although it is understood to be in the nature
of things that it will be devoured by the lower animals, this is not
the primary motive. The practice is common with all maritime nations
on the occurrence of deaths out at sea. Burial in the sea generally
has, however, of late been recommended as a panacea for the ills
seen to be consequent upon inhumation. One writer[48] pictures
the 'dead ship' daily departing from the strand with its lifeless
burden, and reverently and prayerfully committing the bodies to the
bosom of the 'mystic main,' until the time when the sea shall give
up its dead. But there is little to recommend the practice, even if
the idea were not revolting to a people who exist largely upon fish
and crustaceans. When a flight of locusts was some years ago swept
by a storm into the Bay of Smyrna, many people there would not feed
upon fish for a considerable time afterwards, and what would the
feeling be if only the dwellers in our littoral towns and villages
followed out burial in the sea? Even the _sinking_ of the bodies
with heavy weights down to the ocean's depths would be hazardous.
The only people who appear to practise sea-burial are the aborigines
of the Chatham Islands. When a fisherman there departs this life,
they put a baited rod in his hand, and, after lashing him fast in
a boat, send him adrift to sea.[49] But I need not further continue
the subject,[50] and I think that it may be taken for granted, that
sea-burial, or immarment, or immersion, or aquation, or whatever
names the method may be known by, will never become general. The
ancient Lacustrine dwellers did not practise water-burial, but
disposed of their dead upon _terra firma_, evidently from motives
that have already been explained.
[48] Veritz.
[49] Welch and Davis.
[50] Dr. Parkes, in the chapter upon the _Disposal of the Dead_, in
'Practical Hygiene,' evidently leans to the opinion that burial in
the sea _might_ suit maritime nations.
A method of petrifaction has lately been broached, and has met with
some adherents. Something is to be produced similar to a relic which
I once saw for sale in Manchester, taken from a guano-bed about
thirty years ago, and which had been interred in the phosphates
about a hundred and fifty years previously. In a cave in the Bay of
Nipea, a number of bodies were discovered which had been petrified
by the waters of some springs. The latest mode of effecting this
kind of sanitary preservation was practised upon the body of
Mazzini; and the result was, I understand, very disappointing.
A system of inhumation analogous to that practised when
stone-coffins were in use is now agitating in Germany.[51] It is
proposed to encrust the subject over with a cement, and, after
placing it in a sarcophagus of similar artificial material, to pour
more of the same matter in a fluid state around it, so that the dead
would be entombed in a solid matrix of long-enduring material. But
those who are practically acquainted with the nature of cements, or
rather with the impossibility of resting assured that proper cements
would always be used, will know that it is more than likely that,
out of the 32,000 who are said to die annually per million, one-half
of the bodies would be enveloped in an impoverished material,
which would speedily fall to pieces, with disastrous results. Dr.
Sedgwick has expressed himself as certain that even plaster of
Paris would prove ineffective in preventing the exhalations from
coffins. Supposing, too, that each of the defunct required a space
of one cubic yard only, where could cemeteries be obtained which
could afford permanently to alienate 32,000 cubic yards of space
per million annually? The scheme carries wildness upon its very
face. Something analogous to this system of burial was the strange
one carried out by the ancient Peruvians. A late traveller[52] has
described some of the Huacas, as the places were called, and the
well-preserved remains of which are still to be seen. It was a
system of piling up coffins of plaster in pyramid fashion, to such
an extent that one of these pyramidal mounds measures over 14½
millions of cubic feet. One carefully examined measured over 3½
millions of cubic feet, and was one mass of half-mummified bodies.
As fast as a death took place, a chamber of sun-dried material was
prepared upon the mound, and the body laid in it; and although
the material of which the mound was composed was little else than
mud-plaster, these cellular-built Huacas possessed a wonderful power
of resistance to decay. One of them, in 1854, had occasion during
the war to accommodate a battery of artillery on its summit.
[51] Dr. von Steinbeis.
[52] Mr. H. J. Hutchinson.
Many of the ancient peoples buried in caves. The primeval races
frequently used the caverns once inhabited by the extinct beasts
for this purpose.[53] The ancient Persians hewed out holes in the
mountains with the same view. The early Arabians also hid their dead
in caves, in order to protect them from wild beasts. Burial-caves of
some ancient Russian peoples are found along the Borysthenes.[54]
To this class of burial might also be said to belong all those
tombs which were built up in chambers with rude pieces of stone,
and whether afterwards heaped over with earth or not. A tomb of
this latter description was the huge barrow of the Emperor Yung-Lo,
with its extensive megalithic avenue leading to its centre, by way
of which the dead was visited or the tomb cleansed.[55] The stone
lines on Dartmoor may have originally belonged to this category.
Even at the present day the Inguishes of the Caucasus bury in vaults
of masonry built above ground, with an aperture in the west side by
which the corpse is introduced, and which is afterwards filled up
with stones.[56]
[53] Buckland.
[54] Frazer.
[55] Lieut. Oliver.
[56] Howarth.
We now approach _burial in the earth_, and the common practice
of the present day. It is not needful, however, to say much here
concerning it, as it will be treated of in a separate chapter, where
its shortcomings will also be noted. The most persistent practisers
of inhumation[57] are the Chinese. They seem rarely to have followed
any other system of burial. Long before the Christian era they used
coffins, and previous to committing them to the ground inserted
in them gold and silver valuables. But at that time they did not
form grave-mounds or fence them round with extensive palisades.[58]
The secret of their attachment to burial in the earth lies in the
fact that they believe that the body must rest comfortably in the
grave, or misfortune will follow the family.[59] The Chinese are
therefore particularly anxious about the suitableness of the burial
site, and sometimes a priest is consulted and a fresh interment
made. This superstition has considerable disadvantages, because
the dead not being interred in enclosed spaces, as with us, but
at the fancy of the relatives, it is sometimes impossible to make
roadways from place to place. They oppose tramways and railways for
this reason, and riots with the Franks have already taken place
in consequence. The Chinese never desecrate the graves of even
foreign sailors, and have been known to inter cast-ashore bodies
with the greatest attention. To wherever they themselves wander,
and whether they die and are buried in California or in Australia,
they are eventually re-interred in the Flowery Land, in the mortuary
erections of the villages dear to them. It is therefore not uncommon
to see a China-bound vessel from San Francisco well freighted with
the bones of disinterred Celestials. On the hills in China the
graves are often allowed to remain undisturbed for years, whilst
in the low-lying districts the bones are gathered up as soon as
possible.[60] There is no such thing there as a burying-ground or
cemetery.
[57] This word conveys the meaning of burial in the actual earth
better perhaps than any other.
[58] Wylie.
[59] Dr. Eatwell.
[60] Lockhart.
The treatment of the dead known as embalming was carried on by
the ancient Egyptians from apparently the remotest times. They
believed in the transmigration of souls, and their return in three
thousand years to the same body; hence the practice. Long before
the sumptuous mummy-pits were commenced by the later races, the
system was in full observance. There have lately been exhibited[61]
a bone necklace and two flint bracelets which were found in a very
rude mummy-pit on the edge of the Plain of Thebes, and doubtless
these represent the distant antiquity of Egypt. Flint instruments
have also been found in mummy-cases.[62] The extent of country
over which mummifying must have extended was enormous, if, as is
urged,[63] there was any kinship between the red races of Europe and
America and the Egyptians--who all practised embalming in some shape
or form--and as was supposed to be the case from the existence of
pyramid building in all three countries.
[61] By Mr. McCullum in 1873.
[62] Rossellini.
[63] By Professor Gennarelli.
Embalming has continued to meet with supporters in most
civilised countries, but little practical result follows, for
the opportunities of practising it are few and far between. Some
literature exists on the subject, and a few treatises have been
published upon it in our own country, notably one by Surgeon
Greenhill in 1705. Mummifying preparations were, I find, patented
by Orioli in 1859, by Morgan in 1863, by Audigier in 1864, and by
Larnandes in 1866. Suggestions for a partial embalmment were also
published in 1860 by Copping and in 1863 by Spicer. The filling of
the arterial and vascular systems with concentrated solutions was
also proposed by Spear, Scollay, and by two Parisians, in the year
1867; and yet another patent was issued in 1868. But we may assume
that an universal system of embalmment is undesirable in our times.
There is no purpose to serve in withholding from nature her very
own. Cases may be imagined in which the practice would be advisable;
but, as a rule, the earth's surface is required for the living, not
for the dead; and we have, at least here, no underground caves. Had
the Egyptians lived in a damp climate such as ours, there would have
been no embalming. It is not every country that is suited to the
practice. The people of Etruria were, it is now supposed, Egyptian
in descent, but they were content with images of mummies only. The
failures we ourselves have met with, and which are to be seen in the
Royal College of Surgeons Museum[64] and other places, are quite
sufficient to disenchant anyone. The Egyptian authorities themselves
eventually abolished the practice.[65] What would they have said if
they had lived to see their revered dead and their sacred animals
carted away and sold as a drug, or worse still, as a manure?
Professor Coletti has wisely remarked that when a man passes over
to the majority[66] he should speedily become 'a handful of simple
earth and nothing more.'
[64] See the body of Mrs. Van Butchell, embalmed by Dr. Hunter and
Mr. Carpenter in 1775.
[65] Walker.
[66] What a majority this must be, if the human skeleton from
the Florida Reef is rightly estimated by Agassiz at 10,000 years
old, the Egyptian relics from the Limant Bay borings by Rosière
at 30,000, the remains from the New Orleans forest by Dowler at
50,000 years, and if the human bones found at the Illinois river, at
Natchez, at Calaveras, at Anguilla Island, and in the Ashley river,
are correctly stated by Schmidt, Dickeson, Whitney, Rijgersma,
Holmes, Lubbock, and others, as contemporaneous with the mammoth and
mastodon!
There is a system of burial somewhat analogous to embalming,
which consists of drying up the body, and then interring it. The
ancient Peruvians used to dry their dead in the sun, and inter
them in a sitting posture, bound in cotton cloth, the quantity of
saltpetre in the ground completing the desiccation.[67] The Huacas
or huge pyramidal burial mounds of these people, which were so
constructed that each added body, with its funeral accessories, had
its own clay-mortar enclosure, prove also that some rude attempt
at embalmment was practised.[68] To the present day races are
discovered which possess some knowledge of the art. A tribe in South
Australia practise the following system. They place the deceased in
a sitting posture near the top of the hut, and keep up fires until
the body is dry, when they proceed to bandage it. Eventually they
hide it away amongst the branches of trees.[69] In another remote
part of the world, Japan, the Aino aboriginals, when a chief dies,
lay the body out at the door of the hut, remove the viscera, and
wash it daily in the sun for a whole year. When completely dried,
the remains are put in a coffin and buried.[70] In India beyond the
Ganges, the Looshais also practise a desiccation of the dead.[71]
And the manner in which the body of our noble traveller Dr.
Livingstone was prepared previous to bringing him home, would seem
to point to the prevalence of such a custom, or to the tradition of
one, amongst the African races.
[67] Hutchinson.
[68] Bradley.
[69] Hutchinson.
[70] St. John.
[71] Dr. A. Campbell.
There remains now only cremation to notice, the origin of which
practice is lost in obscurity. It would serve little purpose to
compile a mere list of the countries in which it was practised.
Sufficient now to say that nearly all the ancient peoples observed
it, the Chinese and the Jews being notable exceptions to this
rule. The ancient Germans burnt their dead;[72] so did the ancient
Lithuanians--placing the ashes in urns of unburnt clay, and burying
them in mounds, as is proved by an exploration of the great barrows
near Sapolia in Russia.[73] Over our own islands also, cremation
seems to have been common. Urns are still unearthed from time to
time in England, and in parts of Ireland--one part of Antrim
especially--the ground is almost studded with burial sites of
this character. In Scotland, too, many similar remains have been
discovered. In Hindoostan the system is all but universal, and
in Siam, where the ashes are frequently placed in urns of great
value,[74] it doubtless existed from the first peopling of the
country. The people of Pegu and Laos also burn their dead;[75] and
in Burmah, when a Buddhist priest of rank dies, the body is embalmed
in honey, laid in state for a time, and then sometimes blown up with
gunpowder together with its hearse.
[72] Tacitus.
[73] Bogouschefsky.
[74] Crawfurd, &c.
[75] Feudge.
Scarcely a year passes over our heads without adding to our list
of cremation-practising peoples. Thus we have lately learnt that
amongst the Gāro Hill tribes of Bengal, the dead are kept for four
days and burnt at midnight within a few yards of their residences,
the ashes being put into a hole in the ground dug upon the exact
spot where the burning took place, and a small thatched building
erected over the grave, which is afterwards allowed to fall to
pieces.[76] The Khāsi Hill tribes also practise cremation of the
dead, and the ashes are collected in an urn, and temporarily
buried close by, until it is deemed proper to remove them to the
family depository of the tribe.[77] Some of the Aracan tribes
of Further India also burn their dead, leaving at the place of
cremation some packets of rice, a neglect of which custom is a bar
to inheritance.[78] And not only from remote Asia do instances of
cremation come before us, but from America, where the practice was
little suspected. Thus the Cocopa Indians there practise it to the
present day, laying the body upon logs of mezquite wood, burning it,
with the effects of the deceased, and placing the ashes in urns with
peculiar ceremonies.[79] The Digger Indians also burn their dead,
the nearest relative collecting the ashes and mixing with them the
gum of a tree. This they smear on their heads in evident imitation,
one would suppose, of the Israelites when in mourning.[80] I could
quote numerous other examples of the practice of burning the dead,
tracing them satisfactorily, I have reason to think, to sanitary
motives. Some of the systems observed, however, are excessively
puzzling; for instance, the triple treatment of the Singpho people,
who embalm, burn, and bury in rotation. The bodies are first of all
dried in coffins made for the purpose, whereupon the mummy is burnt,
the ashes being deposited in mounds, which last are eventually
covered over with conical roofs.[81]
[76] Elliot.
[77] Major Godwin-Austen.
[78] St. A. St. John.
[79] Professor Le Conte.
[80] Chapman.
[81] Griffiths.
Many other strange matters connected with mortuary observances,
incomprehensible I am afraid at present, would confront the student
of burial customs. Why, for instance, should the Greeks who burnt
their dead place in the tomb vases and other things esteemed by
the deceased?[82] and why do we find the same practice in vogue as
far off as Madagascar, where they do not burn their dead?[83] Why
also should the Scythians of old have burnt the body, and also the
chattels of the deceased?[84] Why should the Patagonians of to-day
bury the body and burn the chattels,[85] and the Shan-doo tribes of
Aracan, where cremation is common, burn neither and bury both?[86]
Or if these questions are easily answered, why, if not for sanitary
reasons, should any people have gone to the trouble and expense
of cremation, when exposure or burial in the earth was so easy to
perform and absolutely costless?[87]
[82] Vitruvius.
[83] Dr. Oliver.
[84] Herodotus.
[85] Journal Anth. Inst.
[86] St. A. St. John.
[87] In ancient Greece, unteethed infants, suicides, and
lightning-stricken people, were forbidden the _privileges_ of
cremation.
When the necessity for cremation has once become a settled
conviction with a people, nothing but the pressure of a conquering
race or religion inimical to the practice will eradicate it. In
parts of Madras where fuel is dear, the body is reduced to ashes
with dried cow-dung and wood. In Siam, if poverty forbids immediate
cremation, the body is first buried, and when the cost of the
process can be borne, the body is disinterred and given to the
purifying flame. Rather too than lose the benefits of cremation,
when wood was scarce and when it was forbidden to cast the partly
consumed bodies in the river, the poor people of Bengal, with, for
that race, even avidity, are closing with the proposal of Sir Cecil
Beadon to erect a Cinerator, and thus departing from their ancient
traditional routine.[88] Not even the recurring cases of premature
burning, such as that not long ago at Ramkistopore, can wean the
Hindoos from the burning _ghat_. They will risk their lives in
war time in order to collect fuel to bury a dead comrade.[89] In
any country where cremation is practised, it is only when there
is absolutely no property whatsoever that burning is omitted. For
instance, a Zaisaugh amongst the Kalmucks, whose property will
pay for a proper offering, can have his dead body burnt, and only
the utterly poor are buried or abandoned.[90] More than this, in
order to establish apparently a proper regard for the practice, and
preclude any laxity in its observance, a sham burning is carried
out by some peoples. Should, for example, a Khāsi Hill tribe man die
whilst on a distant expedition, and his body not be recoverable,
some cowries or shell money are burnt with the deceased man's
clothes, and the ashes placed in the family repository.[91]
[88] The first devised cinerator was that of Col. Thos. Martin, and
in it any number of bodies could be calcined at a time, and still
allow of a separate collection of the ashes. This cinerator was in
the shape of a pentagon, to accommodate the various castes, and had
a separate place allotted to the Brahmins.
[89] 'Iron.'
[90] Liadov.
[91] Godwin-Austen.
There are several spurious kinds, or half-and-half schemes, of
cremation. For instance, the Fresendajians place their dead
in vases of aquafortis.[92] Caustic potash and other chemical
substances have also been proposed for placing in the coffin.[93]
A quasi-burning--the burial of the bodies in quicklime--is also
practised by the Sephardic Jews of Gibraltar and North Africa. Even
recently, the Spanish and Portuguese Jews have made use of this
system at the Mile End cemetery, London.[94] During the Prussian
occupation of Chalons, numbers of typhus-stricken dead were interred
in this material, but the result was unsatisfactory.[95] At York
can be seen a casting inside which a Roman lady was so burned, but
whether intentionally or not, it is impossible to say.
[92] Frazer.
[93] Professor P. Gorini, author of 'I vulcani sperimentali,'
is said to have made some experiments in his laboratory at Lodi
during the month of September 1873, with a liquid composition of
which he preserves the secret, and which envelopes in flames and
completely destroys without noise or odour whatever animal substance
is immersed in it. But some doubts have been raised as to its
practicability.
[94] 'Jewish Chronicle.'
[95] See p. 64.