The Gazetteers Department

Hindus usually cremate their dead. Only children under eight years of age are buried. When a person is in his last moments and he is conscious, he keeps on remembering or repeating God's name. If he is unconscious, other people do it for him. At the point of death, his head is taken by his son or wife in his or her lap and holy Ganges water and a leaf of tulsi plant is put in his mouth. It is also customary to put a gold piece and a pearl in his mouth. When life is extinct, the news is announced to relatives and friends and even communicated to distant places. Nearmost relatives try to come for the cremation and if it is a son or a brother it is customary even to postpone cremation for about 24 hours. When relatives and friends gather, they start preparations for carrying the dead body to the cremation ground. Usually, it is a ladder-like bier that is prepared out of bamboos. Two new earthen pots, a large one for water and a small one for fire, gulal (red powder), betel-leaves and white cloth about seven and half feet long are procured. Arrangements for sufficient firewood and cowdung cakes and a few dry tulsi plants are made. The dead body is washed and securely tied in the bamboo bier and shrouded with the white cloth, keeping only the face bare. The son or the nearest relative takes a bath. Nearest kinsmen or close friends become the four bier-carriers and the son leads all the mourners to the cremation ground. He carries the fire-pot on a triangular frame fastened to a string. On reaching the cremation spot, a pile of firewood and cowdung cakes is laid. The dead body is kept on it and covered with fuel including the dried tulsi plants. The son with the help of the priest sets fire to the pyre. He goes round the pyre three times with a water-filled earthen pot and stands at the head of the pyre. Another person breaks the pot with a small stone and the son beats his mouth with the back of his hand. He then goes and sits among the other mourners. All of them wait till the skull bursts, whose sound is heard by all. The stone with which the earthen pot is broken is carefully preserved for further obsequies as the symbol of the dead to whom water oblations arc given by the dearest and the nearest. The mourners return home. In the evening, a lighted lamp is kept burning where the deceased breathed his last. If the deceased is a woman with her husband alive, she is decked with flowers, rubbed with turmeric paste and a kumkum mark is placed on her forehead and a handful of rice, a cocoanut and betel leaves are laid in her lap. Otherwise, the rest of the procedure is the same.

If the deceased belongs to the Brahman or Kshatriya stock, the after-death rites are observed in the Vedic style known as mantragni; in the case of others also priests officiate but it is a simple consignment to fire. On the third day, the son accompanied by few friends and relatives visit the cremation ground and from the spot where the dead body was burnt, the) collect the ashes and whatever remains of the bones. These are consigned in the water of a stream or river and those who can afford to do so, take the same for consignment to a holy place like Prayag. where the Ganges, Jamna and Sarasvati rivers meet and is therefore called Triveni Sangam. On the tenth day, all members of the household take a purificatory bath, all clothes are washed. The son of the deceased lakes off his moustache and bathes. After bath the ashma, i.e. the symbolic stone representing the deceased is washed with cowdung and rice oblations are offered to it in the cremation ground. Presents of money and utility articles are made to' a Brahman in the name of the deceased which once included clothes, shoes and a cow. The normal expectation of the son and others is that when the oblations are offered in open space, crows should come and dispose of them. If this does not happen, the belief is that the deceased desires those left behind to' give him some assurance or other regarding this thing or that. Sometimes all these efforts fail to make the crow touch the rice ball oblations; but most often they are not disappointed. After this procedure is gone through the mourners return home.

On the eleventh day, all members of the household take pancagavya and sprinkle it all over the house. This is a mixture made of cow's milk, curds, urine, ghee and dung. New sacred threads are worn. On the 12th day a ritual known as sapindi sraddha is held. By virtue of this ritual the deceased is gathered to his previous three pitrs i.e. father, grandfather and great-grandfather. On the 13th day, a sraddha is performed in the name of the dead and friends and kinsmen are asked for dinner. After this, every year, the sraddha is performed on the day of the death of the deceased.

Once a deceased has been cremated, the sraddha is not now-a-days observed in the prescribed way every year in families who have come under modern influences. Some charity is made in his name in his memory out of grateful feelings. Those who can afford it, even award prizes, and scholarships in his name or pay poor students' fees in his name. The time-honoured rites do not suit the present tempo of life. Taking the dead body in a hand-cart has also been introduced in various places instead of on a bier on four persons' shoulders.

SOCIAL LIFE.

Recent legal enactments have considerably affected the position of Hindu women. Equality of the sexes, in general, has been regarded as guaranteed by the constitution of the Indian Union and women are not prevented now from participating in any field of civil life of the country. They can, in theory, practise any profession, hold any office and even inherit property in their own right. A Hindu widow could take another husband among the so-called lower castes of Hindus by usage but the Hindu law in theory put a ban on widow marriage so far as the so-called higher communities like Brahmans, Kshatriyas and Vaishyas were concerned. But the Widow Remarriage Act of 1853 removed this disability, even though during the last 100 years, widow marriages have not taken place in large numbers. The right of divorce was not there at all, because the Hindu marriage, in theory, is indissoluble; but legislation in this behalf has allowed divorce to any Hindu wife for sufficient cause. The restrictions on divorce have made it difficult enough. There is provision, however, for legal separation on sufficient cause being shown, at almost any time. With the spread of education among women and their having come out of homes to seek jobs on an equal footing with men, divorce cases have begun to figure in the news from time to time. The natural disabilities to which woman's status is heir, has, however, fed to the existence of some kind of traffic in women for ages together with the attendant evil of prostitution. To this arc allied, though in a clandestine way, the evils of drink and gambling. But these are not there in this district on such a scale as to cause alarm. Prohibition has been legally established all over the Maharashtra State though its breaches are found to be rather too many for a reason-able enforcement of the law. Breaches of so many provisions of the Penal Code are there from day to day, but they are not supposed to be a menace to peace, order and good government. Similar is the case of breaches of the Prohibition law. Gambling has never caused even that much trouble, though enlightened public opinion demands that measures of enforcement of the anti-drink and anti-gambling legislations need to be more drastic and stringent.

TOP