e is expeditiously chosen, and the mourners with
their own hands construct the pile. Now sanctified by Mother Ganga, the
corpse is fetched from the strand and placed on the structure, feet ever
directed toward the precious river. The pyre is soon ready for the
torch, and here occurs a curious incident, one that illustrates the
monopolistic importance of a man wearing only a loin-cloth, who has been
taking an indifferent interest in the proceedings from an elevation
close by. He is a Dom, of a caste so degraded that should he
inadvertently touch a corpse it would be contaminated beyond remedy. But
immemorial custom requires that the fire be obtained from him, and he
may demand payment therefor in keeping with his estimate of the worldly
position of the applicants. Ordinarily a rupee is sufficient, although
for a grandee's cremation a fee of a thousand rupees has sometimes been
demanded and paid.

The dicker with the Dom being concluded, the chief mourner lights a
handful of dried reeds at his fire, hurries to the waiting pyre, walks
seven times around it, and with the blazing reeds held in the right hand
lights the mass at head and foot. The mourners then withdraw to a shaded
spot beside a suttee structure, and silently watch the conflagration. In
an hour all is over, and the ashes then are strewn far out on the
surface of the Ganges and are borne from sight by the current.

From ten to fifteen corpses are disposed of at the burning-ghat daily,
and several cremations are usually simultaneously in process. Now and
then there is some demonstration of grief, but not often. I saw two men
wade to a body in the river, when they pulled away the covering from the
face and bathed it with handfuls of water scooped from beloved Ganga,
and their every movement denoted affection. Again, I witnessed a
tottering and sobbing old man place with every expression of tenderness
a garland of yellow and white flowers about the neck of a corpse swathed
in red, and imagined it the last office of love to an idolized daughter.
I also observed the bare corpse of a man who an hour before had died of
plague brought to the ghat by two public scavengers, and committed to
the flames of a few logs much too short, until the slender legs had been
doubled beneath the body. No sandal-wood perfumed this pauper's pyre,
and no interment in potter's field was ever more perfunctory than his
burning.

Social distinctions are as marked at the Benares burning-gha