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JULY, 1907.1
NOTES ON THE CHINS OF BURMA.
215
to the ancestral burial-place, which is generally situated in some remote jungle. It is usual for a person to be cremated about three days after his death. A burial would normally take place within twenty-four hours of the death.
The spirit of the dead man should take apits abode in the (~)*klo-seung; but the living are much afraid that it may not do so. They do not believe that the life "over there" is a very joyous one ; being rather of the view of Achilles, whose shade told Ulysses that it was better to be a slave on earth than a prince in Hades. The dead man is told that he may not linger more than seven days in his old house; for they believe that the spirits of the dead look with envy on the living, and that they will harm them. The night before they take away the charred bones to the cemetery (ayódaung) they interrogate the pot of bones. They ask him what disease he died of, and will say "Let it be that he died of fever if the pot feels light; of some other disease if it feels heavy"; and then they test it. Again they ask him if he is still lingering about here, or does he now inhabit that country," and the answer is given in the same way as before.
Next morning they start off early, and if the deceased was a person of any means at all, they will carry with them an elaborately carved memorial post of cutch-wood to erect in the cemetery. On the top of the post will be carved the figure of an elephant or of a bird ; and beneath that six-parallel circles will be cut round the post in the case of a male, and five in the case of a female. In the case of an unmarried girl all her private belongings are taken and deposited by the pot of bones, and in every case rice, chicken, ngapi, chillies, betel, and tobacco will be left for the soul of the departed to enjoy.
I do not find it possible to reconcile all the traditions and ideas held by the same individual Chin; and perhaps it would be too much to expect that they should admit of being harmonized, and more especially so with regard to matters concerning the future life. Certainly the Chins generally do not seem to believe in the doctrine of the transmigration of souls; yet my chief informant gave me the following information in Chin writing :-“We, Chin people, must die when the rice given to our spirits on their departure from their former existence is finished. We can only remain in this existence as long as that rice lasts. The people who bad much given them [lit. "broaght much with them"] live long. This rice is pat in small baskets outside the village fence before the corpse is removed from the house for cremation.” The writer went on to add, what is indeed more in accord with the general traditions, but scarcely consonant with the above. “When a woman dies her hasband will cry out by the corpse, 'when you come to Pói "Kleok tell him that I am left behind here; and ask him to call me before long. Now when she adds] people with some little property die, bullocks and buffaloes are offered in sacrifice that they may find favour when they present themselves before Pói 'Kleuk; but if the people are poor they make offerings of pigs and fowls."
But to return to the funeral. When the people convey the pot of bones to the cemetery, they take with them some cotton yarn, and whenever they come to any stream or other water, they stretch a thread across, wbereby the spirit of the deceased, who accompanies them, may get across it, too. When they have duly deposited the bones and food for the spirit in the cemetery they return home, after bidding the spirit to remain there, and not to follow them back to the village. At the same time they block the way by which they return by putting a bamboo across the path.
The spirit, however, has not finished his travels yet. It must go on antil it comes to the stream of white water, on the other side of which dwells the Lord of Hades, Pói Kleuk. He will cry out to Pói.Kleuk, and after he appears will let the breeze waft, streamer-like
