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iitdia's religions and social characteristics. 225
and, while the body is being consumed, priests and distant
friends chant the Rig and the Sama Vedas. The immediate
mourners stand around, dressed in white. Often the ashes
are gathered up, and preserved in urns.
HOW shall we dispose of our dead?
Touching the removal of the dead, these have been the
common methods : interment, exposing upon towers of
silence, mummification, and incinerating or burning upon
the prepared pyre.
Considering the loathsome changes of
decomposition, with the liberation and discharging of poisonous
gases into the atmosphere, the burying of deceased
bodies is open to serious objections. It is well known that
sulphuretted and phosphuretted gases are active poisons
and their influence, when breathed even in infinitesimal
quantities, must be deleterious to health. Dr. Walker, a
London surgeon, shows in his " Gatherings from Graveyards,"
that from the surface of the ground, above dead bodies,
there are continually rising poisonous miasmas. These
impregnate and infect the germ-cells and dust of the air
breathed ; and thus disease is borne upon the winds. There
are few unhealthier places than the cemeteries of crowded
cities. In them epidemics and pestilences often originate.
People should avoid rather than visit them. In the early
history of Judaism, to merely touch a dead body rendered
the person " unclean for seven days."
Extravagant coffins, pompous ceremonies, costly monuments,
gloved priests, expensive mourning apparel, and
bearing corpses long distances for burial, all violate the
genius of that Spiritual philosophy which sees that the
spirit
'
'
Sings now an everlasting song
Amidst the trees of life.
The opposition of churchmen to cremation arises from
their theological belief that graveyards are temporary resting-
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