Nimtoolaghat--Cremation in India--Parsee Funeral Rites.
India is the only country in the world where the civilization of the
East and that of the West are found side by side with equal rights and
equal chances of a free and full development. For, although the English
have conquered, and at present rule the country, they have respected the
peculiar customs and manners of the Hindoos, and guaranteed them liberty
to practice the same and to develop their social and religious
institutions in so far as they do not conflict with the generally
acknowledged principles of humanity.
Accordingly in Calcutta and other cities in India we frequently find a
stately Christian church side by side with a Hindoo temple with its
officiating priests. On one side of the street we may see a fine
European residence filled with guests around the dinner-table, eating,
chatting, and toasting just as at home, and on the other a Hindoo villa,
where turbaned Brahmins, in a squatting posture, eat their rice or smoke
their hokah, while extolling the merits of their juggernaut. At popular
meetings and fetes European lords, bishops, officials, and ladies are
often seen engaged in a friendly conversation with Hindoo princes, or
learned pundits, Mohammedan warriors, Persian, Armenian or Jewish
merchants. On the streets and promenades the European carriage and the
Hindoo palanquin are seen side by side; in Calcutta there are scores of
high schools and academies on the European plan, and close to these
again others where young students in oriental costumes and turbaned
heads, squat before a half-naked Brahmin, seeking wisdom and knowledge
from the works of the Vedas or Shastras.
It is therefore not surprising that in the very harbor where American
and European flags are waving from hundreds of mast-heads lies
Nimtoolaghat, a Hindoo place of cremation, from which the whole day long
dense clouds of smoke arise, scattering the vapors of burning human
bodies. It is a large brick building which is divided into two
apartments by a brick wall. The apartment which is next to the street is
covered by a roof, but the one next to the harbor is open at the top.
The floor is made of clay, excepting the spots under the funeral pyres,
where it consists of large flagstones. I have often stood at this place,
and it always seemed to me that our cemeteries with their monuments,
grass plots, trees, and flowers are dear places which, to some extent,
reconcile man to stern death, while here everything seemed dead and
hopeless. I will describe for the reader what I saw at one of my visits
to this place of desolation. On the flagstones in the roofless apartment
were six separate pyres, two of which were already reduced to ashes when
I entered, two others were about half consumed by the fire, only a few
bones being visible among the fire-brands; but on each of the other two
was a naked corpse, the outside of which was scorched by the flames,
while blood and water were slowly oozing out of mouth and nostrils,
while the burning flesh hissed and sputtered where the heat was most
intense, so that the whole presented a shocking sight. A score of
half-naked Brahmins were busy around the pyres muttering prayers and
making signs over the dead, while the nearest relatives walked around
the corpses uttering cries of lamentation. Particularly violent was the
grief of a young woman whose mother had just been laid upon the pyre,
deep sorrow and heart-rending lamentations testifying to the love she
had borne the deceased.
[Illustration: NIMTOOLAGHAT--PLACE OF CREMATION.]
Now the fine-split wood is piled up into a new pyre about six feet long,
two feet wide, and two and one-half feet high, and four men bring the
corpse of a man on a bier. It is covered with a white sheet, which is
taken away, so as to leave only a small piece of cloth covering the
corpse. This is the body of a Fakir, a stately man with fine features,
and past the prime of life. As soon as the body is placed on the pyre,
two Brahmins pile fine-split wood around and over it so that only the
face is visible. Then comes the eldest son of the deceased and rubbing
the face with fresh butter lays several lumps of it on the pyre. He then
walks three times around the corpse and lights with a fire-brand a whisk
of straw in his father's pyre. The fire spreads rapidly through the dry
wood. The melting butter flows through it, the flames roar and crackle,
and the dead body makes writhing muscular motions under the influence of
the fire, the skin bursting open in several places, and a thin fluid
trickling out which adds fuel to the flames. The face shrinks and
vanishes under our eyes, an unpleasant smell of burnt flesh permeates
the air, and in a little while all is over, and the Brahmins gather the
ashes and scatter them on the waters of the sacred Ganges.
Who can wonder that a stranger, witnessing such a ceremony, experiences
in his own breast questions and surmises such as these: Is this, then,
all? Where is the Fakir who mortified his body by all kinds of torture,
who struggled and suffered in order to become acceptable to the gods?
Was there nothing more than that shell, consumed before our eyes? Is the
man who spent half of his life-time gazing into the boundless realm of
space and yearning and longing for the unknown, the infinite, no longer
in existence? Was his longing only a mockery, or was it a foreshadowing
of that which is to come? What would life be if all terminated in the
pyre or in the grave? To what purpose, then, all noble endeavors, whose
aim and object only relate to the uncertain future? The deepest
premonitions of the human soul, and the most beautiful hopes of the
heart, how far are these from the thought that all our feelings, our
loftiest ambitions,--in one word the best part of our being,--can be
annihilated in a crematory! The Fakir whose body was now reduced to
ashes had lived in the faith of his immortality, had worshiped the
deities of his people, because he knew no better, but was he on that
account less welcome in the everlasting mansions?
Formerly the wife was burned alive on the pyre of her husband, but this
practice has been abolished by the English government, although it is
still said to be adhered to secretly in the interior of the country.
That woman is considered very fortunate who can enjoy the privilege of
"sati," that is, be burned alive on the funeral pyre of her husband, for
thereby she secures unquestionable happiness in the next world. So
strongly can religious enthusiasm, even in our days, influence a
sensible and civilized people. We generally suppose cremation in India
to be an imposing ceremony, such as a great pyre, intense heat, which
keeps a devout congregation at a proper distance, etc. Such is not the
case, however; for, leaving out the mourning relatives, it may better be
compared with the hilarious soldiers around the camp-fire roasting the
booty of a nightly raid,--a shote or a quarter of beef.
An entirely different mode of burial is used among the Parsees, who are
descendants of the ancient Persians, and live in the western part of
India where they were driven from Iran by the Mohammedans. They profess
the religion of Zoroaster and are fire-worshipers. They regard the
earth, air, water and fire as sacred objects, but a corpse, on the
contrary, as something unclean, and therefore they would not pollute the
fire by burning the dead, nor soil the earth or the sea by burying them.
In place of this they expose the dead bodies in the open air to be
devoured by birds of prey. For this purpose are erected towers of stone,
on the top of which are iron grates to put the bodies on. In one of the
suburbs of Bombay are three such towers on Malabar hill. They are called
"The Towers of Silence." Each of them has only one entrance, and they
are about twenty feet high. Large flocks of ravens and vultures surround
them sitting on branches of the palm trees in the vicinity. As soon as a
corpse is exposed there is a fierce rush for it, and within an hour the
birds have consumed everything except, of course, the bones, which drop
down into a vault under the tower, or are thrown there by means of tongs
held by gloved servants, who afterward clean themselves by bathing and
change of clothing.