he dead woman lies in her bier;
the white on her eyes and brow is the mark of Siva's ashes. Some of the
mourners are so marked, as they are all Saivites. The fire is lighted
from the pot of fire to the right. Just before it is lighted, the chief
mourner takes a vessel of water, pierces a hole in it, walks round the
dead, letting the water trickle out, pierces another hole and repeats
the walk. After the third piercing and walk, he throws the pot backwards
over his shoulder, and as it smashes the water all splashes out. This is
to refresh the spirit if it should be thirsty while its body is being
burned.]

After many ceremonies had been performed, the men all went away, and the
women were left to bid farewell to the form soon to be carried out. Then
the men came back and bore him across the courtyard, and paused under
the arch outside, while the women all rushed out, tearing their hair and
beating themselves and wailing wildly. As they were lifting the bier to
depart the cry was, "Stop! stop! Will he not speak?" And this, chanted
again and again, would have made the coldest care. Then when all was
over, and the long procession, headed by the tom-toms and conch shells,
had passed out of sight, the women pressed in again, and each first let
down her hair, and seized her nearest neighbour, and they all flung
themselves on the ground and knocked their heads against it, and then,
rising to a sitting posture, they held on to one another, swaying
backwards and forwards and chanting in time to the swaying, in chorus
and antiphone. All this, even to the hair-tearing and head-knocking, was
copied by the children who were present with terrible fidelity.

We sat down among them. They took our hands and rocked us in the
orthodox way. But we did not wail and we did not undo our hair. We tried
to speak comforting words to those who were really in grief, but we
found it was not the time. A fortnight later we went again, and found
the house door open because we had been with them that day.

But we could not help them then, so we rose and were going away, when,
held by the power of that dirge of theirs, I turned to look again. The
last rays of the afternoon sun were lighting up the courtyard, and
shining on the masses of black hair and grey. As I looked they got up
one by one, and put their disordered dress to rights, and shook out the
dust from their glossy hair, and did it up again. And one by one,
without farewell of any sort, they w