' But persons of greater quality are burned, and that with ceremony. When they are dead they lay them out, and put a cloth over their privy parts ; and then wash the body, by taking half a dozen pitchers of water and pouring upon it. Then they cover him with a linen cloth, and so carry him forth to burning. This is when they burn the body speedily. But otherwise they cut down a tree that may be proper for their purpose, and hollow it like a hog-trough, and put the body, being disembowelled and embalmed, into it, filling up all about with pepper, and so let it lie in the house until it be the king's command to carry it out to the burning. For that they dare not do without the king's order if the person deceased be a courtier. Sometimes the king gives no order in a great while ; it may be not at all : therefore, in such cases, that the body may not take up house-room or annoy them, they dig a hole in the floor of their house, and put hollowed tree and all in, and cover it. If afterwards the king commands to burn the body, they take it up again, in obedience to the king — otherwise there it lies.
* Their order for burning is this : if the body be not thus put into a trough or hollow tree, it is laid upon one of his bedsteads, which is a great honour among them. This bedstead with the body on it, or hollowed tree with the body in it, is fastened with poles, and carried upon men's shoulders unto the place of burning, which is some eminent place in the fields, or highways, or where else they please. There they lay it upon a pile of wood some two or three feet high ; — then they pile up more wood upon the corpse, lying thus on the bedstead or in the trough. Over all they have a kind of canopy built (if he be a person of very high quality), covered at top, hung about with painted cloth, and bunches of cocoa-nuts, and green boughs ; and so fire is put to it. After all is burnt to ashes, they sweep to- gether the ashes into the manner of a sugar-loaf, and hedge the place round from wild beasts breaking in, and they will sow herbs there. Thus I saw the king's uncle, the chief tirinanx 1 (who was, as it were, the chief primate of all the
1 Knox's way of spelling Temnnanse, that is, Thera.
nation), burned upon a high place, that the blaze might be seen a great way V
I myself saw an Unn&ns6 burned very much in this way near the Weyangoda Court-house ; and there is a long account in the native newspaper, the Lak-riwi-kirana (Ceylon Sunbeam), of the 12th March, 1870, of the crema- tion of a Weda-r&la, or native doctor. Bishop Bigandet relates in a note in his ' Life or Legend of Gautama ' the corresponding ceremonies still in use in Burma, of which he has been a witness 2 ; but cremation is apparently as seldom resorted to in Burma as it is in Ceylon.
The unceremonious mode of burying the dead referred to
by Knox is not adopted in the more settled districts on
the sea coast. When at Galle I enquired into the funeral
customs there prevalent, with the following result 3 :
A few hours after a man has died, the relations wash the corpse, shave it ; and, having clothed it with a strip of clean white cloth, place it on a bedstead covered with white cloth, and under a canopy (wiyana) also of white cloth. They then place two lamps, one to burn at the head, and the other at the foot of the corpse, and use perfumes.
A coffin is then prepared, covered with black cloth ; and the body is placed on the coffin, and is then sprinkled over with lavender or rose-water. The women meanwhile bow backwards and forwards with their hands behind their heads, uttering loud wailings over the deceased.
Then the male relatives carry the coffin to the grave, which is dug in one of their own cocoa-nut topes near by, and over which is raised a more or less elaborate canopy or arch of cloths and evergreens (gerfi-ge), adorned with the tender leaves and flowers of the cocoa-nut. Along the path also from the house to the grave young cocoa-nut leaves and flowers are sometimes hung, and the pathway itself is often spread with clean white cloths.
The tom-tom beaters go first ; and the dull monotonous
1 In the older editions of Knox there is a curious engraving of a body being thus burnt.
* Third edition, vol. ii. pp. 78, 79.
' See the Ceylon Friend for 1870, pp. 109 and following.
sound of their instruments of music is appropriate enough. Then follow some Buddhist mendicants, in number accord- ing to the wealth or influence of the deceased, and walking under a portable canopy of white cloth. Then the coffin is carried by the nearest male relatives, and followed by other male relatives and relations — no females, even the widowed mother of an only son, taking part in this last sad pro- cession.
Three times the coffin is carried round the grave : then it is placed on two sticks placed across the mouth of the pit ; and one end of a roll of white cloth is placed on the coffin, the other end being held by all the UnnAnsSs (Bhikkhus) whilst the people repeat three times in P&li the well-known formula of the Refuges (the simple Nicene Creed of the Buddhists) :
'I take my refuge in the Buddha,
I take my refuge in the Dhamma,
I take my refuge in the Order 1 .'
Then the priests respond, thrice repeating in P&li the well-known verse discussed below 2 :
'How transient are all component things 1
Their nature's to be born and die ;
Coming, they go ; and then is best,
When each has ceased, and all is rest!'
Then the Unn&nsfis let go the roll of white cloth, and
whilst water is poured from a goblet into a cup placed
on a plate until the cup is full to the brim 3 , they again
chaunt three times in Pali the following verses : —
c As rivers, when they fill, must flow, And reach, and fill the distant main ;
1 Buddha** sara.na.rn gaJkkksLad
Dhamma** sarawaw g&kkk&mi
Sa.mgha.rn saianam ga£££&mi.
3 Anikki vata sawkhara uppadavaya-dhammino
Uppa£gitv& nirqggvianti tes&m vfipasamo sukho. See ' Book of the Great Decease,* VI, 16, and the * Legend of the Great King of Glory,' II, 42. 3 This ceremony is called Fxm wadanawa.
So surely what is given here
Will reach and bless the spirits there!
If you on earth will gladly give Departed ghosts will gladly live!
As water poured on mountain tops
Must soon descend, and reach the plain ;
So surely what is given here
Will reach and bless the spirits there 1 !'
The relations then place the coffin in the grave, and each throws in a handful of earth. The Unn&ns&s then go away, taking the roll or rolls of cloth, one end of which was placed upon the coffin. The grave is filled in. Two lights, one at the head of it, and one at the foot, are left burning. And then the friends and relations return to the house.
The funeral now being over, is followed by a feast;
for though nothing may be cooked in a house or hut in
which there is a corpse, yet plenty of food has been brought
in from neighbouring tenements by the relations of the
deceased.
There is, however, yet another very curious ceremony to be gone through. Three or seven days — whichever, according to the rules of astrology, is a lucky day — after the deceased person died, an Unn&ns6 is duly invited to the house in which the deceased died. He arrives in the evening ; reads bana (that is, the Word, passages from the sacred books) throughout the night ; and in the morning is presented with a roll of white cloth, and is asked to Partake of food, chiefly of course curries, of those different kinds of which the deceased had been most particularly fond.
Yatha varivaha punt paripGrenti sagaraw Evam eva ito dinnaw petanam upakappati.
Ito dinnena yapenti peta kalakata tahia*.
Unname udakaw vsJfam yatha ninnaw pavattati Evam eva ito dinna?,? petanaw upakappati.
These verses occur in the Tiroku<&a-Sutta of the Khuddaka-Pa/Aa, but in * different order.
This ceremony is called Mataka D&naya (Gift for the Dead), and the previous feast is called Mataka Bhatta (Feast in honour of the Dead) : the two combined taking the place of an ancient rite observed in pagan, pre-Buddhistic, times, and then also called Mataka Bhatta, in which offerings were made to the Petas ; that is, to the manes, or departed ghosts, of ancestors and near relations. Such offerings are of course forbidden to Bud- dhists \ and it is a very instructive instance of a survival in belief, of the effect of the natural reluctance to make much change in the mode of paying the customary funeral respect to deceased friends, that the kind of food supposed to be most appreciated by the dead should still be used in the Buddhist funeral rites.
Another part of the ceremony, that part where one end of a roll of cloth is placed on the coffin while the other end is held by all the assembled Unn&ns£s 2 , is a fragment of ritualistic symbolism which deserves attention. The mem- bers of the Buddhist Order of Mendicants were enjoined to avoid all personal decoration of any kind ; and to attire themselves in cloths of no value, such as might be gathered from a dust heap (Pa^su-kula), or even from a cemetery. This was a principle to be followed, not a literal rule to be observed ; and therefore from the first presents of strips of plain white cotton cloth, first torn in pieces to deprive them of any commercial value, then pieced together again and dyed a dull orange colour to call to mind the colour of old worn out linen, were the material from which the mendicants' clothing was actually made. But the duty of contempt for dress (called Pa^su-kulikanga, from the dust heap) was never lost sight of, and advantage was taken of the gifts given by the faithful at funerals to impress this duty upon the minds of the assembled Bhikkhus.
Nothing is known of any religious ceremony having been
performed by the early Buddhists in India, whether the
person deceased was a layman, or even a member of the
1 Compare the Mataka-Bhatta- G&taka (No. 18), translated in 'Buddhist Birth Stories,' vol. i. pp. 226 and following.
2 See p. xlii.
Order. The Vinaya Pi/aka, which enters at so great length into all the details of the daily life of the recluses, has no rules regarding the mode of treating the body of a deceased Bhikkhu. It was probably burnt, and very much in the manner described in the last chapter of our Sutta — that is to say, it was reverently carried out to some convenient spot, and there simply cremated on a funeral pyre without any religious ritual, a small tope being more often than not erected over the ashes. Though funerals are, naturally, not unfrequently mentioned in the historical books, and in the Birth Stories, there is nowhere any reference to a recognised mode of performing any religious ceremony \
The date of the Great Decease is not quite certain. The dwellers in the valley of the Ganges, for many genera- tions after Gotama's death, were a happy people, who had no need of dates ; and it was only long afterwards, and in Ceylon, that the great event became used as the starting- point for chronological calculations, as the Buddhist era.
The earliest use of the Buddha's Parinibbdna as such an era is in an Inscription of King Nissanka Malla's, of the twelfth century A. D., published by me in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society for 1875. Both in the historical records of Ceylon, and in those passages of the Pur&zsas which are the nearest approach to historical records in India, the chronology is usually based on the lists of kings, just as it is in the Old Testament. Only by adding to- gether the lengths of the reigns of the intermediate kings is it possible to calculate the length of the time that is said to have elapsed between any two given events.
If these lists of kings had been accurately kept from