Part 17 (1/2)
”His Siamese Majesty, with his 29 sons, and 25 daughters above partly named, trusts that this part will be acceptable to every one of His Gracious Majesty's and their Royal Highnesses' friends who ever have been acquainted with his present Majesty, and certain of Their Royal Highnesses or Her late Royal Highness the deceased, either in person or by correspondence, or only by name through cards &c. for a token of remembrance of Her late Royal Highness the deceased and for feeling of Emotion that this path ought to be followed by every one of human beings after long or short time, as the lights of lives of all living beings are like flames of candles lighted in opening air without covering and Protecting on every side, so it shall be considered with great emotion by the readers.
”Dated ROYAL FUNERAL PLACE. BANGKOK, 20th February, Anno Christi 1864.”
Thus twelve days were pa.s.sed in feasting, drinking, praying, preaching, sporting, gambling and scrambling. On the thirteenth, the double urn, with its melancholy moral, was removed from the pyramid, and the inner one, with the grating, was laid on a bed of fragrant sandalwood, and aromatic gums, connected with a train of gunpowder, which the king ignited with a match from the sacred fire that burns continually in the temple Watt P'hra Keau. The Second King then lighted his candles from the same torch, and laid them on the pyre; and so on, in the order of rank, down to the meanest slave, until many hundreds of wax candles and boxes of precious spices and fragrant gums were cast into the flames.
The funeral orchestra then played a wailing dirge, and the mourning women broke into a concerted and prolonged keen, of the most ear-piercing and heart-rending description.
When the fire had quite burned itself out, all that remained of the bones, charred and blackened, was carefully gathered, deposited in a third and smaller urn of gold, and again conveyed in great state to the Maha Phrasat. The ashes were also collected with scrupulous pains in a pure cloth of white muslin, and laid in a gold dish; afterward, attended by all the mourning women and musicians, and escorted by a procession of barges, it was floated some miles down the river, and there committed to the waters.
Nothing left of our lovely darling but a few charred bits of rubbis.h.!.+
But in memory I still catch glimpses of the sylph-like form, half veiled in the shroud of flame that wrapped her last, but with the innocent, questioning eyes still turned to me; and as I look back into their depths of purity and love, again and again I mourn, as at first, for that which made me feel, more and more by its sympathy, the peculiar desolation of my life in the palace.
Immediately on the death of a Supreme King an order is issued for the universal shaving of the bristly tuft from the heads of all male subjects. Only those princes who are older than their deceased sovereign are exempt from the operation of this law.
Upon his successor devolves the duty of providing for the erection of the royal P'hra-mene--as to the proportions and adornment of which he is supposed to be guided by regard for the august rank of the deceased, and the public estimation in which his name and fame are held. Royal despatches are forthwith sent to the governors of four different provinces in the extreme north, where the n.o.blest timber abounds, commanding each of them to furnish one of the great pillars for the P'hra-mene. These must be of the finest wood, perfectly straight, from two hundred to two hundred and fifty feet long, and not less than twelve feet in circ.u.mference.
At the same time twelve pillars, somewhat smaller, are required from the governors of twelve other provinces; besides much timber in other forms necessary to the construction of the grand funeral hall and its numerous supplementary buildings. As sacred custom will not tolerate the presence of pillars that have already been used for any purpose whatever, it is indispensable that fresh ones, ”virgin trunks,” be procured for every new occasion of the obsequies of royalty. These four great trunks are hard to find, and can be floated down the Meinam to the capital only at the seasons when that stream and its tributaries are high. This is perhaps the natural cause of the long interval that elapses--twelve months--between the death and the cremation of a Siamese king.
The ”giant boles” are dragged in primitive fas.h.i.+on to the banks of the stream by elephants and buffaloes, and s.h.i.+pped in rafts. Arrived at Bangkok, they are hauled on rollers inch by inch, by men working with a rude windla.s.s and levers, to the site of the P'hra-mene.
The following description of the cremation, at Bejrepuri, of a man ”in the middle walks of life,” is taken from the _Bangkok Recorder_ of May 24, 1866:--”The corpse was first to be offered to the vultures, a hundred or more. Before the coffin was opened the filthy and horrible gang had a.s.sembled, 'for wheresoever the carca.s.s is, there will the eagles (vultures) be gathered together.' They were perched on the ridges of the temple, and even on small trees and bushes, within a few feet of the body; and so greedy were they that the s.e.xton and his a.s.sistants had to beat them off many times before the coffin could be opened. They seemed to know that there would be but a mouthful for each, if divided among them all, and the pack of greedy dogs besides, that waited for their share. The body was taken from the coffin and laid on a pile of wood that had been prepared on a small temporary altar. Then the birds were allowed to descend upon the corpse and tear it as they liked. For a while it was quite hidden in the rush. But each bird, grabbing its part with bill and claws, spread its wings and mounted to some quiet place to eat. The s.e.xton seemed to think that he too was 'making merit' by cutting off parts of the body and throwing them to the hungry dogs, as the dying man had done in bequeathing his body to those carrion-feeders.
The birds, not satisfied with what they got from the altar, came down and quarrelled with the curs for their share.
”While this was going on, the mourners stood waiting, with wax candles and incense sticks, to pay their last tribute of respect to the deceased by a.s.sisting in the burning of the bones after the vultures and dogs had stripped them. The s.e.xton, with the a.s.sistance of another, gathered up the skeleton and put it back into the coffin, which was lifted by four men and carried around the funeral pile three times. It was then laid on the pile of wood, and a few sticks were put into the coffin to aid in burning the bones. Then a lighted torch was applied to the pile, and the relatives and other mourners advanced, and laid each a wax candle by the torch. Others brought incense and cast it on the pile.
”The vultures, having had but a scanty breakfast, lingered around the place until the fire had left nothing more for them, when they shook their ugly heads, and hopping a few steps, to get up a momentum, flapped their harpy wings and flew away.”
XXIV. CERTAIN SUPERSt.i.tIONS.
MY friend Maha Mongkut used to maintain, with the doctors and sophists of his sect, that the Buddhist priesthood have no superst.i.tions; that though they do not accept the Christian's ”Providence,” they do believe in a Creator (_P'hra-Tham_), at whose will all crude matter sprang into existence, but who exercises no further control over it; that man is but one of the endless mutations of matter,--was not created, but has existed from the beginning, and will continue to exist to all eternity; that though he was not born in sin, he is held by the secondary law of retribution accountable for offences committed in his person, and these he must expiate through subsequent transmigrations, until, by sublimation, he is absorbed again into the primal source of his being; and that mutability is an essential and absolute law of the universe.
In like manner they protest that they are not idolaters, any more than the Roman Catholics are pagans; that the image of Buddha, their Teacher and High-Priest, is to them what the crucifix is to the Jesuit; neither more nor less. They scout the idea that they wors.h.i.+p the white elephant, but acknowledge that they hold the beast sacred, as one of the incarnations of their great reformer.
Nevertheless, no nation or tribe of all the human race has ever been more profoundly inoculated with a superst.i.tion the most depraving and malignant than the Siamese. They have peopled their spiritual world with grotesques, conceived in hallucination and brought forth in nightmare, the monstrous devices of mischief on the one hand and misery on the other,--G.o.ds, demons, genii, goblins, wraiths; and to flatter or propitiate these, especially to enlist their tutelary offices, they commit or connive at crimes of fantastic enormity.
While residing within the walls of Bangkok, I learned of the existence of a custom having all the stability and force of a Medo-Persic law.
Whenever a command has gone forth from the throne for the erection of a new fort or a new gate, or the reconstruction of an old one, this ancient custom demands, as the first step in the procedure, that three innocent men shall be immolated on the site selected by the court astrologers, and at their ”auspicious” hour.
In 1865, his Majesty and the French Consul at Bangkok had a grave misunderstanding about a proposed modification of a treaty relating to Cambodia. The consul demanded the removal of the prime minister from the commission appointed to arrange the terms of this treaty. The king replied that it was beyond his power to remove the Kralahome. Afterward, the consul, always irritable and insolent, having nursed his wrath to keep it warm, waylaid the king as he was returning from a temple, and threatened him with war, and what not, if he did not accede to his demands. Whereupon, the poor king, effectually intimidated, took refuge in his palace behind barred gates; and forthwith sent messengers to his astrologers, magicians, and soothsayers, to inquire what the situation prognosticated.
The magi and the augurs, and all the seventh sons of seventh sons, having shrewedly pumped the officers, and made a solemn show of consulting their oracles, replied: ”The times are full of omen. Danger approaches from afar. Let his Majesty erect a third gate, on the east and on the west.”
Next morning, betimes, pick and spade were busy, digging deep trenches outside the pair of gates that, on the east and west alike, already protected the palace.
Meanwhile, the consul either quite forgot his threats, or cooled in the cuddling of them; yet day and night the king's people plied pick and spade and basket in the new foundations. When all was ready, the _San Luang_, or secret council of Royal Judges, met at midnight in the palace, and despatched twelve officers to lurk around the new gates until dawn. Two, stationed just within the entrance, a.s.sume the character of neighbors and friends, calling loudly to this or that pa.s.senger, and continually repeating familiar names. The peasants and market folk, who are always pa.s.sing at that hour, hearing these calls, stop, and turn to see who is wanted. Instantly the myrmidons of the san luang rush from their hiding-places, and arrest, hap-hazard, six of them--three for each gate. From that moment the doom of these astonished, trembling wretches is sealed. No pet.i.tions, payments, prayers, can save them.
In the centre of the gateway a deep fosse or ditch is dug, and over it is suspended by two cords an enormous beam. On the ”auspicious” day for the sacrifice, the innocent, unresisting victims--”hinds and churls”