211. Cremation

Cremation

Psa_115:7-8 : ’93They have hands, but they handle not: feet have they, but they walk not: neither speak they through their throat. They that make them are like unto them.’94

The life of the missionary in foreign lands is a luxurious and indolent life: Hinduism is a religion that ought not to be interfered with: Christianity is guilty of an impertinence when it invades heathendom: you must put in the same line of reverence Brahma, Buddha, Mohammed, and Christ. So we have been told in this nineteenth century. To refute these slanders and blasphemies now so prevalent, and to spread out before the Christian world the contrast between idolatrous and Christian countries, I preach this sermon.

In this discourse I take you to the very headquarters of heathendom, to the very capital of Hinduism: for what Mecca is to the Mohammedan, and what Jerusalem is to the Christian, Benares, India, is to the Hindu. We arrived there in the evening, and the next morning we started out early, among other things to see the burning of the dead. We saw it, cremation, not as many good people in America and England are now advocating it, namely, the burning of the dead in clean and orderly and refined crematory, the hot furnace soon reducing the human form to a powder to be carefully preserved in an urn; but cremation as the Hindus practise it. We got into a boat and were rowed down the river Ganges until we came opposite to where five dead bodies lay, four of them women wrapped in red garments, and a man wrapped in white.

Our boat fastened, we waited and watched. High piles of wood were on the bank, and this wood is carefully weighed according as the friends of the deceased can afford to pay for it. In many cases only a few sticks can be afforded, and the dead body is burned only a little, and then thrown into the Ganges. But where the relatives of the deceased are well to do, an abundance of wood in pieces four or five feet long is purchased. Two or three layers of sticks are then put on the ground to receive the dead form. Small pieces of sandal-wood are inserted to produce fragrance. The deceased is lifted from the resting-place and put upon this wood. Then the cover is removed from the face of the corpse and it is bathed with water of the Ganges. Then several more layers of wood are put upon the body, and other sticks are placed on both sides of it, but the head and feet are left exposed. Then a quantity of grease sufficient to make everything inflammable is put on the wood, and into the mouth of the dead. Then one of the richest men in Benares, his fortune made in this way, furnishes the fire, and, after the priest has mumbled a few words, the eldest son walks three times around the sacred pile, and then applies the torch, and the fire blazes up, and in a short time the body has become the ashes which the relatives throw into the Ganges.

We saw floating past us on the Ganges the body of a child which had been only partially burned, because the parents could not afford enough wood. While we watched the floating form of the child a crow alighted upon it. In the meantime hundreds of Hindus were bathing in the river, dipping their heads, filling their mouths, replenishing their brass cups, muttering words of so-called prayer. Such a mingling of superstition and loathsomeness, and inhumanity I had never before seen. The Ganges is to the Hindus the best river of all the earth, but to me it is the vilest stream that ever rolled its stench in horror to the sea. I looked all along the banks for the mourners for the dead. I saw in two of the cities nine cremations, but in no case a sad look or a tear. I said to friends: ’93How is this? Have the living no grief for the dead?’94 I found that the women do not come forth on such occasions, but that does not account for the absence of all signs of grief. There is another reason more potent. Men do not see the faces of their wives until after marriage. They take them on recommendation. Marriages thus formed, of course, have not much affection in them. Women are married at seven and ten years of age, and are grandmothers at thirty. Such unwisely-formed family associations do not imply much ardor of love. The family so poorly put together’97who wonders that it is easily taken apart? And so I account for the absence of all signs of grief at the cremation of the Hindus.

Benares is the capital of Hinduism and Buddhism, but in this particular city Hinduism has trampled out Buddhism, the hoof of the one monster on the grizzly neck of the other monster. It is also the capital of filth, and the capital of malodors, and the capital of indecency. The Hindus say they have three hundred million gods. Benares being the headquarters of these deities you will not be surprised to find that the making of gods is a profitable business. Here there are carpenters making wooden gods, and brass workers making brass gods, and sculptors making stone gods, and potters making clay gods. I cannot think of the abominations practised here without a recoil of stomach and a need of cologne. Although much is said about the carving on the temples of this city, everything is so vile that there is not much room left for the aesthetic. The devotees enter the temples nineteen-twentieths unclothed, and depart begging. All that Hinduism can do for a man or woman it does here. Notwithstanding all that may have been said in its favor at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago, it makes man a brute, and woman the lowest type of slave. I would rather be a horse or a cow or a dog in India than be a woman. The greatest disaster that can happen to a Hindu is that he was born at all.

Benares is imposing in the distance as you look at it from the other side of the Ganges. The forty-seven ghats, or flights of stone steps, reaching from the water’92s edge to the buildings high up on the banks, mark a place for the ascent and descent of the sublimities. The eye is lost in the bewilderment of tombs, shrines, minarets, palaces, and temples. It is the glorification of steps, the triumph of stairways. But looked at close by, the temples, though large and expensive, are anything but attractive. The seeming gold in many cases turns out to be brass. The precious stones in the wall turn out to be paint. The marble is stucco. The slippery and disgusting steps lead you to images of horrible visage, and the flowers put upon the altar have their fragrance submerged by that which is the opposite of aromatics.

After you have seen the ghats, the two great things in Benares that you must see are the Golden and Monkey Temples. About the vast Golden Temple there is not as much gold as would make an English sovereign. The air itself is asphyxiated. Here we see men making gods out of mud and then putting their hands together in worship of that which themselves have made. Sacred cows walk up and down the temple. Here stood a fakir with a right arm uplifted, and for so long a time that he could not take it down, and the nails of the hand had grown until they looked like serpents winding in and around the palm. The god of the Golden Temple is Siva, or the poison god. Devils wait upon him. He is the god of war, of famine, of pestilence. He is the destroyer. He has around his neck a string of skulls. Before him bow men whose hair never knew a comb. They eat carrion and that which is worse. Bells and drums here set up a racket. Pilgrims come from hundreds of miles away, spending their last piece of money and exhausting their last item of strength in order to reach this Golden Temple, glad to die in or near it, and have the ashes of their bodies thrown into the Ganges.

We took a carriage and went still farther on to see the Monkey Temple, so-called because in and around the building monkeys abound and are kept as sacred. All evolutionists should visit this temple devoted to the family from which their ancestors came. These monkeys chatter and wink and climb and look wise and look silly and have full possession of the place. We were asked at the entrance of the Monkey Temple to take off our shoes because of the sacredness of the place, but a small contribution placed in the hands of an attendant resulted in a permission to enter with our shoes on. As the Golden Temple is dedicated to Siva, the poison god, this Monkey Temple is dedicated to Siva’92s wife, a deitess, who must be propitiated, or she will disease and blast and destroy. For centuries this spitfire has been worshiped. She is the goddess of scold and slap and termagancy. She is supposed to be a supernatural Xantippe; hence to her are brought flowers and rice, and here and there the flowers are spattered with the blood of goats slain in sacrifice.

As we walk through this Monkey Temple we must not hit or tease or hurt one of them. Two Englishmen years ago lost their lives for the maltreatment of a monkey. Passing along one of these Indian streets, a monkey did not soon enough get out of the way, and one of these Englishmen struck it with his cane. Immediately the people and the priests gathered around these strangers, and the public wrath increased until the two Englishmen were pounded to death for having struck a monkey. No land in all the world so reveres the monkey as India, as no other land has a temple called after it. One of the rajahs of India spent one hundred thousand rupees in the marriage of two monkeys. A nuptial procession was formed in which moved camels, elephants, tigers and palanquins of richly-dressed people. Bands sounded the wedding march. Dancing parties kept the night sleepless. It was twelve days before the monkey and monkeyess were free from their round of gay attentions. In no place but India could such a carnival have occurred.

But, after all, while we cannot approve of the Monkey Temple, the monkey is sacred to hilarity. I defy any one to watch a monkey one minute without laughter. Why was this creature made? For the world’92s amusement. The mission of some animals is left doubtful and we cannot see the use of this or that quadruped, or this or that insect, but the mission of the ape is certain: all around the world it entertains. Whether seated at the top of this temple in India, or cutting up its antics on the top of a hand-organ, it stirs the sense of the ludicrous; tickles the diaphragm into cachinnation; topples gravity into play, and accomplishes that for which it was created. The eagle and the lion and the gazelle and the robin no more certainly have their mission than has the monkey. But it implies a low form of Hinduism when this embodied parody of the human race is lifted into worship.

In one of the cities, for the first time in my life, I had an opportunity of talking with a Fakir, or a Hindu who has renounced the world and lives on alms. He sat under a rough covering on a platform of brick. He was covered with the ashes of the dead, and was at the time rubbing more of those ashes upon his arms and legs. He understood and spoke English. I said to him: ’93How long have you been seated here?’94 He replied, ’93Fifteen years.’94 ’93Have those idols which I see power to help or destroy? ’93He said, ’93No; they only represent God. There is but one God.’94

Question: When people die where do they go?

Answer: That depends upon what they have been doing. If they have been doing good, to heaven; if they have been doing evil, to hell.

Question: But do you not believe in the transmigration of souls, and that after death we go into birds or animals of some sort?

Answer: Yes; the last creature a man is thinking of while dying is the one into which he will go. If he is thinking of a bird he will go into a bird; and if he is thinking of a cow he will go into a cow.

Question: I thought you said that at death the soul goes to heaven or hell?

Answer: He goes there by a gradual process. It may take him years and years.

Question: Can any one become a Hindu? Could I become a Hindu?

Answer: Yes, you could.

Question: How could I become a Hindu?

Answer: By doing as the Hindus do.

But as I looked upon the poor filthy wretch, bedaubing himself with the ashes of the dead, I thought the last thing on earth I would want to become would be a Hindu. I expressed to a missionary who overheard the conversation between the Fakir and myself my amazement at some of the doctrines the Fakir announced. The missionary said: ’93The Fakirs are very accommodating, and supposing you to be a friend of Christianity, he professed to believe the theory of one God, and that of rewards and punishments.’94

There are, however, alleviations for Benares. I attended worship in one of the Christian missions. The sermon, though delivered in Hindustanee, of which I could not understand a word, thrilled me with its earnestness and tenderness of tone, especially when the missionary told me at the close of the service that he recently baptized a man who was converted through reading one of my sermons among the hills of India. The songs of the two Christian assemblages which I visited in this city, although the tunes were new, and the sentiments not translated, were uplifting and inspiring to the last degree.

There was also a school of six hundred native girls, an institution established by a rajah of generosity and wealth, a graduate of Madras University. But, more than all, the missionaries are busy, some of them preaching on the ghats, some of them in churches, in chapels, and bazaars. The London Missionary Society has here its college for young men, and its schools for children, and its houses of worship for all. The Church Missionary Society has its eight schools, all filled with learners. The evangelizing work of the Wesleyans and the Baptists are felt in all parts of Benares. In its mightiest stronghold Hinduism is being assaulted.

And now as to the industrious malignment of missionaries: It has been said by some travelers after their return to America or England that the missionaries are living a life full of indolence and luxury. That is a falsehood that I would say is as high as heaven, if it did not go down in the opposite direction. When strangers come into those tropical climates, the missionaries do their best to entertain them, making sacrifices for that purpose. In the city of Benares, a missionary told me that a gentleman coming from England into one of the mission stations of India, the missionaries banded together to entertain him. Among other things, they had a ham boiled, prepared and beautifully decorated, and the same ham was passed around from house to house as the stranger appeared, and in other respects a conspiracy of kindness was effected. The visitor went home to England and wrote and spoke of the luxury in which the missionaries of India were living. Americans and Englishmen come to these tropical regions and find a missionary living under palms and with different styles of fruits on his table, and forget that palms are here as cheap as hickory or pine in America, and rich fruits as cheap as plain apples. They find here missionaries sleeping under punkas, these fans swung day and night by coolies, and forget that four cents a day is good wages here, and the man boards himself. Four cents a day for a coachman; a missionary can afford to ride. There have been missionaries who have come to these hot climates resolving to live as the natives live, and one or two years have finished their work, their chief use on missionary ground being that of furnishing the chief object of interest for a large funeral.

So far from living in idleness, no men on earth work so hard as the missionaries now in the foreign field. Against fearful odds, and with three millions of Christians opposed to two hundred and fifty millions of Hindus, Mohammedans, and other false religions, these missionaries are trying to take India for God. Let the good people of America and England and Scotland and of all Christendom add ninety-nine and three-quarters per cent. to their appreciation of the fidelity and consecration of foreign missionaries. Far away from home, in an exhausting climate, and compelled to send their children to England, Scotland, or America so as to escape the corrupt conversation and behavior of the natives, these men and women of God toil on until they drop into their graves. But they will get their chief appreciation when their work is over and the day is won, as it will be won. No place in heaven will be too good for them. Some of the ministers at home who live on salaries of four thousand or five thousand dollars a year, preaching the Gospel of him who had not where to lay his head, will enter heaven and be welcomed, and while looking for a place to sit down, they will be told: ’93Yonder in that lower line of thrones you will take your place. Not on the thrones nearest the King; they are reserved for the missionaries!’94

Meanwhile let all Christendom be thrilled with gladness. About twenty-five thousand converts in India every year under the Methodist missions, and about twenty-five thousand converts under the Baptist missions, and about seventy-five thousand converts under all missions every year. But more than that, Christianity is undermining heathenism, and not a city, or town, or neighborhood of India but directly or indirectly feels the influence; and the day speeds on when Hinduism will go down with a crash. There are whole villages which have given up their gods, and where not an idol is left. The serfdom of womanhood in many places is being unloosened, and the iron grip of caste is being relaxed. Human sacrifices have ceased, and the last spark of the funeral pyre on which the widow must leap has been extinguished, and the juggernaut, stopped, now stands as a curiosity for travelers to look at. All India will be taken for Christ. If any one has any disheartenments let him keep them as his own private property; he is welcome to all of them. But if any man has any encouragements to utter he has facts to justify him in uttering them. What we want in the church and the world is less croaking owls of the night, and more morning larks with spread wing ready to meet the advancing day. Fold up Naomi and Windham, and give us Ariel or Mt. Pisgah, or Coronation.

I had the joy of preaching in many of the cities of India, and seeing the dusky faces of the natives illumined with heavenly anticipation. In Calcutta, while the congregation were yet seated, I took my departure for a railroad train. I preached by the watch up to the last minute. A swift carriage brought me to the station not more than half a minute before starting. I came nearer to missing the train than I hope any one of us will come to missing heaven.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage