ched coolies
employed on the place make a pile of wood, one layer pointing
one way and the next crossed at right angles, a hole left in
the center being filled with kindling and quick-burning reeds.
The body is lifted from the bier and placed upon it, then more
wood is piled on and the kindling is lit with a torch. If there
is plenty of dry fuel the corpse is reduced to ashes in about
two hours. Usually the ashes are claimed by friends, who take
them to the nearest temple and after prayers and other ceremonies
cast them into the waters of the bay.

The death rate in Bombay is very large. The bubonic plague prevails
there with a frightful mortality. Hence cremation is safer than
burial. In the province of Bombay the total deaths from all diseases
average about 600,000 a year, and you can calculate what an enormous
area would be required for cemeteries. In 1900, on account of
the famine, the deaths ran up to 1,318,783, and in 1902 they
were more than 800,000. Of these 128,259 were from the plague,
13,600 from cholera, 5,340 from smallpox, and 2,212 from other
contagious diseases. Hence the burning ghats were very useful,
for at least 80 percent of the dead were Brahmins and their bodies
were disposed of in that way.

It is difficult to give an accurate idea of Brahminism in a brief
manner, but theoretically it is based upon the principles set
forth in a series of sacred books known as the Vedas, written
about 4,000 years ago. Its gods were originally physical forces
and phenomena--nature worship,--which was once common to all
men, the sun, fire, water, light, wind, the procreative and
productive energies and the mystery of sex and birth, which impressed
with wonder and awe the mind of primitive humanity. As these
deities became more and more vague and indefinite in the popular
mind, and the simple, instinctive appeal of the human soul to
a Power it could not see or comprehend was gradually debased
into what is now known as Brahminism, and the most repugnant,
revolting, cruel, obscene and vicious rites ever practiced by
savages or barbarians. There is nothing in the Vedas to justify
the cruelties of the Hindu gods and the practices of the priests.
They do not authorize animal worship, caste, child-marriage,
the burning of widows or perpetual widowhood, but the Brahmins
have built up a stupendous system of superstition, of which they
alone pretend to know the mystic meaning, and their supremacy is
established. Thus the