Ireland—one part of Antrim especially—the ground is almost studded with burial sites of this character. In Scotland, too, many similar remains have been discovered. In Hindoostan the system is all but universal, and in Siam, where the ashes are frequently placed in urns of great value,[74] it doubtless existed from the first peopling of the country. The people of Pegu and Laos also burn their dead;[75] and in Burmah, when a Buddhist priest of rank dies, the body is embalmed in honey, laid in state for a time, and then sometimes blown up with gunpowder together with its hearse.

Scarcely a year passes over our heads without adding to our list of cremation-practising peoples. Thus we have lately learnt that amongst the Gāro Hill tribes of Bengal, the dead are kept for four days and burnt at midnight within a few yards of their residences, the ashes being put into a hole in the ground dug upon the exact spot where the burning took place, and a small thatched building erected over the grave, which is afterwards allowed to fall to pieces.[76] The Khāsi Hill tribes also practise cremation of the dead, and the ashes are collected in an urn, and temporarily buried close by, until it is deemed proper to remove them to the family depository of the tribe.[77] Some of the Aracan tribes of Further India also burn their dead, leaving at the place of cremation some packets of rice, a neglect of which custom is a bar to inheritance.[78] And not only from remote Asia do instances of cremation come before us, but from America, where the practice was little suspected. Thus the Cocopa Indians there practise it to the present day, laying the body upon logs of mezquite wood, burning it, with the effects of the deceased, and placing the ashes in urns with peculiar ceremonies.[79] The Digger Indians also burn their dead, the nearest relative collecting the ashes and mixing with them the gum of a tree. This they smear on their heads in evident imitation, one would suppose, of the Israelites when in mourning.[80] I could quote numerous other examples of the practice of burning the dead, tracing them satisfactorily, I have reason to think, to sanitary motives. Some of the systems observed, however, are excessively puzzling; for instance, the triple treatment of the Singpho people, who embalm, burn, and bury in rotation. The bodies are first of all dried in coffins made for the purpose, whereupon the mummy is burnt, the ashes being deposited in mounds, which last are eventually covered over with conical roofs.[81]

Many other strange matters connected with mortuary observances, incomprehensible I am afraid at present, would confront the student of burial customs. Why, for instance, should the Greeks who burnt their dead place in the tomb vases and other things esteemed by the deceased?[82] and why do we find the same practice in vogue as far off as Madagascar, where they do not burn their dead?[83] Why also should the Scythians of old have burnt the body, and also the chattels of the deceased?[84] Why should the Patagonians of to-day bury the body and burn the chattels,[85] and the Shan-doo tribes of Aracan, where cremation is common, burn neither and bury both?[86] Or if these questions are easily answered, why, if not for sanitary reasons, should any people have gone to the trouble and expense of cremation, when exposure or burial in the earth was so easy to perform and absolutely costless?[87]

When the necessity for cremation has once become a settled conviction with a people, nothing but the pressure of a conquering race or religion inimical to the practice will eradicate it. In parts of Madras where fuel is dear, the body is reduced to ashes with dried cow-dung and wood. In Siam, if poverty forbids immediate cremation, the body is first buried, and when the cost of the process can be borne, the body is disinterred and given to the purifying flame. Rather too than lose the benefits of cremation, when wood was scarce and when it was forbidden to cast the partly consumed bodies in the river, the poor people of Bengal, with, for that race, even avidity, are closing with the proposal of Sir Cecil Beadon to erect a Cinerator, and thus departing from their ancient traditional routine.[88] Not even the recurring cases of premature burning, such as that not long ago at Ramkistopore, can wean the Hindoos from the burning ghat. They will risk their lives in war time in order to collect fuel to bury a dead comrade.[89] In any country where cremation is practised, it is only when there is absolutely no property whatsoever that burning is omitted. For instance, a Zaisaugh amongst the Kalmucks, whose property will pay for a proper offering, can have his dead body burnt, and only the utterly poor are buried or abandoned.