Dhammapada

SR No.: 007674
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Max Muller
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1881
Total Pages: 2540
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 45 MB

Page 454

INTRODUCTION.
xliii
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!!! The relations then place the coffin in the grave, and each throws in a handful of earth. The Unnånsês 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 Unnânsê 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.
Yathả vârivahâ pârâ paripurenti sâgaram Evam eva ito dinnam petânam upakappati. Ito dinnena yâpenti petâ kâlakatâ tahim. Unname udakam vattam yathâ ninnam pavattati
Evam eva ito dinnam petânam upakappati. These verses occur in the Tirokudda-Sutta of the Khuddaka-Patha, but in a different order.
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