A Cremation
Last Monday an Indian prince died at Etretat, Bapu Sahib KhanderaoGhatay, a relation of His Highness, the Maharajah Gaikwar, prince ofBaroda, in the province of Guzerat, Presidency of Bombay.For about three weeks there had been seen walking in the streets aboutten young East Indians, small, lithe, with dark skins, dressed all ingray and wearing on their heads caps such as English grooms wear. Theywere men of high rank who had come to Europe to study the militaryinstitutions of the principal Western nations. The little band consistedof three princes, a nobleman, an interpreter and three servants.The head of the commission had just died, an old man of forty-two andfather-in-law of Sampatro Kashivao Gaikwar, brother of His Highness, theGaikwar of Baroda.The son-in-law accompanied his father-in-law.The other East Indians were called Ganpatrao Shravanrao Gaikwar, cousinof His Highness Khasherao Gadhav; Vasudev Madhav Samarth, interpreter andsecretary; the slaves: Ramchandra Bajaji, Ganu bin Pukiram Kokate,Rhambhaji bin Fabji.On leaving his native land the one who died recently was overcome withterrible grief, and feeling convinced that he would never return hewished to give up the journey, but he had to obey the wishes of his noblerelative, the Prince of Baroda, and he set out.They came to spend the latter part of the summer at Etretat, and peoplewould go out of curiosity every morning to see them taking their bath atthe Etablissment des Roches-Blanches.Five or six days ago Bapu Sahib Khanderao Ghatay was taken with pains inhis gums; then the inflammation spread to the throat and becameulceration. Gangrene set in and, on Monday, the doctors told his youngfriends that their relative was dying. The final struggle was alreadybeginning, and the breath had almost left the unfortunate man's body whenhis friends seized him, snatched him from his bed and laid him on thestone floor of the room, so that, stretched out on the earth, our mother,he should yield up his soul, according to the command of Brahma.They then sent to ask the mayor, M. Boissaye, for a permit to burn thebody that very day so as to fulfill the prescribed ceremonial of theHindoo religion. The mayor hesitated, telegraphed to the prefecture todemand instructions, at the same time sending word that a failure toreply would be considered by him tantamount to a consent. As he hadreceived no reply at 9 o'clock that evening, he decided, in view of theinfectious character of the disease of which the East Indian had died,that the cremation of the body should take place that very night, beneaththe cliff, on the beach, at ebb tide.The mayor is being criticized now for this decision, though he acted asan intelligent, liberal and determined man, and was upheld and advised bythe three physicians who had watched the case and reported the death.They were dancing at the Casino that evening. It was an early autumnevening, rather chilly. A pretty strong wind was blowing from the ocean,although as yet there was no sea on, and swift, light, ragged clouds weredriving across the sky. They came from the edge of the horizon, lookingdark against the background of the sky, but as they approached the moonthey grew whiter and passed hurriedly across her face, veiling it for afew seconds without completely hiding it.The tall,, straight cliffs that inclose the rounded beach of Etretat andterminate in two celebrated arches, called "the Gates," lay in shadow,and made two great black patches in the softly lighted landscape.It had rained all day.The Casino orchestra was playing waltzes, polkas and quadrilles. A rumorwas presently circulated among the groups of dancers. It was said thatan East Indian prince had just died at the Hotel des Bains and that theministry had been approached for permission to burn the body. No onebelieved it, or at least no one supposed that such a thing could occur soforeign was the custom as yet to our customs, and as the night was faradvanced every one went home.At midnight, the lamplighter, running from street to street,extinguished, one after another, the yellow jets of flame that lighted upthe sleeping houses, the mud and the puddles of water. We waited,watching for the hour when the little town should be quiet and deserted.Ever since noon a carpenter had been cutting up wood and asking himselfwith amazement what was going to be done with all these planks sawn upinto little bits, and why one should destroy so much good merchandise.This wood was piled up in a cart which went along through side streets asfar as the beach, without arousing the suspicion of belated persons whomight meet it. It went along on the shingle at the foot of the cliff,and having dumped its contents on the beach the three Indian servantsbegan to build a funeral pile, a little longer than it was wide. Theyworked alone, for no profane hand must aid in this solemn duty.It was one o'clock in the morning when the relations of the deceased wereinformed that they might accomplish their part of the work.The door of the little house they occupied was open, and we perceived,lying on a stretcher in the small, dimly lighted vestibule the corpsecovered with white silk. We could see him plainly as he lay stretchedout on his back, his outline clearly defined beneath this white veil.The East Indians, standing at his feet, remained motionless, while one ofthem performed the prescribed rites, murmuring unfamiliar words in a low,monotonous tone. He walked round and round the corpse; touching itoccasionally, then, taking an urn suspended from three slender chains, hesprinkled it for some time with the sacred water of the Ganges, that EastIndians must always carry with them wherever they go.Then the stretcher was lifted by four of them who started off at a slowmarch. The moon had gone down, leaving the muddy, deserted streets indarkness, but the body on the stretcher appeared to be luminous, sodazzlingly white was the silk, and it was a weird sight to see, passingalong through the night, the semi-luminous form of this corpse, borne bythose men, the dusky skin of whose faces and hands could scarcely bedistinguished from their clothing in the darkness.Behind the corpse came three Indians, and then, a full head taller thanthemselves and wrapped in an ample traveling coat of a soft gray color,appeared the outline of an Englishman, a kind and superior man, a friendof theirs, who was their guide and counselor in their European travels.Beneath the cold, misty sky of this little northern beach I felt as if Iwere taking part in a sort of symbolical drama. It seemed to me thatthey were carrying there, before me, the conquered genius of India,followed, as in a funeral procession, by the victorious genius of Englandrobed in a gray ulster.On the shingly beach the four bearers halted a few moments to takebreath, and then proceeded on their way. They now walked quickly,bending beneath the weight of their burden. At length they reached thefuneral pile. It was erected in an indentation, at the very foot of thecliff, which rose above it perpendicularly a hundred meters high,perfectly white but looking gray in the night.The funeral pile was about three and a half feet high. The corpse wasplaced on it and then one of the Indians asked to have the pole starpointed out to him. This was done, and the dead Rajah was laid with hisfeet turned towards his native country. Then twelve bottles of kerosenewere poured over him and he was covered completely with thin slabs ofpine wood. For almost another hour the relations and servants keptpiling up the funeral pyre which looked like one of those piles of woodthat carpenters keep in their yards. Then on top of this was poured thecontents of twenty bottles of oil, and on top of all they emptied a bagof fine shavings. A few steps further on, a flame was glimmering in alittle bronze brazier, which had remained lighted since the arrival ofthe corpse.The moment had arrived. The relations went to fetch the fire. As it wasbarely alight, some oil was poured on it, and suddenly a flame aroselighting up the great wall of rock from summit to base. An Indian whowas leaning over the brazier rose upright, his two hands in the air, hiselbows bent, and all at once we saw arising, all black on the immensewhite cliff, a colossal shadow, the shadow of Buddha in his hieraticposture. And the little pointed toque that the man wore on his head evenlooked like the head-dress of the god.The effect was so striking and unexpected that I felt my heart beat asthough some supernatural apparition had risen up before me.That was just what it was--the ancient and sacred image, come from theheart of the East to the ends of Europe, and watching over its son whomthey were going to cremate there.It vanished. They brought fire. The shavings on top of the pyre werelighted and then the wood caught fire and a brilliant light illumined thecliff, the shingle and the foam of the waves as they broke on the beach.It grew brighter from second to second, lighting up on the sea in thedistance the dancing crest of the waves.The breeze from the ocean blew in gusts, increasing the heat of the flamewhich flattened down, twisted, then shot up again, throwing out millionsof sparks. They mounted with wild rapidity along the cliff and were lostin the sky, mingling with the stars, increasing their number. Some seabirds who had awakened uttered their plaintive cry, and, describing longcurves, flew, with their white wings extended, through the gleam from thefuneral pyre and then disappeared in the night.Before long the pile of wood was nothing but a mass of flame, not red butyellow, a blinding yellow, a furnace lashed by the wind. And, suddenly,beneath a stronger gust, it tottered, partially crumbling as it leanedtowards the sea, and the corpse came to view, full length, blackened onhis couch of flame and burning with long blue flames:The pile of wood having crumbled further on the right the corpse turnedover as a man does in bed. They immediately covered him with fresh woodand the fire started up again more furiously than ever.The East Indians, seated in a semi-circle on the shingle, looked out withsad, serious faces. And the rest of us, as it was very cold, had drawnnearer to the fire until the smoke and sparks came in our faces. Therewas no odor save that of burning pine and petroleum.Hours passed; day began to break. Toward five o'clock in the morningnothing remained but a heap of ashes. The relations gathered them up,cast some of them to the winds, some in the sea, and kept some in a brassvase that they had brought from India. They then retired to their hometo give utterance to lamentations.These young princes and their servants, by the employment of the mostinadequate appliances succeeded in carrying out the cremation of theirrelation in the most perfect manner, with singular skill and remarkabledignity. Everything was done according to ritual, according to the rigidordinances of their religion. Their dead one rests in peace.The following morning at daybreak there was an indescribable commotion inEtretat. Some insisted that they had burned a man alive, others thatthey were trying to hide a crime, some that the mayor would be put injail, others that the Indian prince had succumbed to an attack ofcholera.The men were amazed, the women indignant. A crowd of people spent theday on the site of the funeral pile, looking for fragments of bone in theshingle that was still warm. They found enough bones to reconstruct tenskeletons, for the farmers on shore frequently throw their dead sheepinto the sea. The finders carefully placed these various fragments intheir pocketbooks. But not one of them possesses a true particle of theIndian prince.That very night a deputy sent by the government came to hold an inquest.He, however, formed an estimate of this singular case like a man ofintelligence and good sense. But what should he say in his report?The East Indians declared that if they had been prevented in France fromcremating their dead they would have taken him to a freer country wherethey could have carried out their customs.Thus, I have seen a man cremated on a funeral pile, and it has given me awish to disappear in the same manner.In this way everything ends at once. Man expedites the slow work ofnature, instead of delaying it by the hideous coffin in which onedecomposes for months. The flesh is dead, the spirit has fled. Firewhich purifies disperses in a few hours all that was a human being; itcasts it to the winds, converting it into air and ashes, and not intoignominious corruption.This is clean and hygienic. Putrefaction beneath the ground in a closedbox where the body becomes like pap, a blackened, stinking pap, has aboutit something repugnant and disgusting. The sight of the coffin as itdescends into this muddy hole wrings one's heart with anguish. But thefuneral pyre which flames up beneath the sky has about it somethinggrand, beautiful and solemn.
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