The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1907, Page 45

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The Lutheran Pioneer.

45

A Funeral in India.

A missionary writing from India says:

“The other day as I was driving through the
city on my way to visit the Hindoo Girls’ School,
1 was detained a little by a funeral procession.
Some Hindoo had died; this I knew at once by
the direction they were moving, as they take their
dead out to an island in the river and burn them,
while the Mohammedans take theirs to the other
side of the city and bury them. The body is carried
on a rude bier made of a broad board, with cross

would come to a standstill, and the women would
wail and tear their hair and beat their breasts.
Just as they reached the river side we passed on our
way, but I knew what they would do next. The bier
would be placed on a flat boat and taken out into
the river to the island and burned. This is done by
placing the body on some wood, more wood placed
over it, and oil or melted butter poured over the
wood; then the nearest relative would set fire to
the pile, and thus the body would be consumed to
ashes. The next day the women of the house would
go and gather up the ashes or little bones and put

PLOWING IN INDIA.

sticks at either end for the carriers to lift and carry
it by. Often poor people, who have no money to
spend, take off the door of their one-roomed house
“and use it to carry their dead. It is not the custom
for women to go outside of their own home to wail
after the bier, but still there are alvays some women
of low caste in the crowd of people that follow.
“Wirst came the men beating the drums and
blowing on horns, making a deafening noise. One
man walked by the side of the bier waving a bunch
of pea-fowl feathers; another walked behind. He
had an earthen pot of rice, raisins, and small coins.
Every once in a while he scattered a handful around
among the crowd of low-caste children, who eagerly
picked them up. Every little while the procession

them away until they could be taken to the river
Ganges. This is their sacred river. It is several
hundred miles from here, but poor people will save
up and starve themselves that they may have money
to get there with the ashes of their dead. They be-
lieve the water of the river washes away all sin,”

A Poor, but Grateful Sailor.

Sir Frederick Treves, the eminent London sur-
geon, has in his possession a gift from a poor Nor-
wegian sailor, which he prizes more than the valu-
able presents he has received from the rich and the
noble of England. The gift is a Norwegian coin