The grave may be dug in a small plot bought by the family in a public
cemetery when the body is to be buried with its coffin. In that case
a separate grave is dug for each body; but if it is to be interred in
a temple yard, one grave will serve for the whole family, for there is
a hollow under the tombstone which is closed with a stone, and at each
burial the stone is removed to put in the urn. The tombstone is
an upright stone, square in section and with a tapering top, which
stands on a stone pedestal. The front inscription merely gives the
name of the family with, perhaps, the family crest over it, and the
Buddhistic name of the deceased is engraved on a side. In a public
cemetery where the grave-enclosures are larger and a tombstone is set
up for every member of the family, the tombstone naturally cannot be
got ready in time for the funeral, and a wooden grave-post is stuck in
the grave with the Buddhistic name in front and the lay name and date
of decease on the sides.
[Illustration: GRAVES.]
After the funeral, the tablet of the deceased is set on a table at
home, and a light and incense are kept burning before it until the
seventh day from the day of decease; and prayers are offered at the
grave every day for the same length of time, after which a priest
comes from the temple every seven days until seven weeks are passed.
For forty-nine days the spirit of the dead wanders in the dark space
intervening between this world and the next, and every seven days it
makes an advance forward, in which it is materially helped by the
prayers of those it has left behind; according to some, the spirit
hovers for the same period over the roof of its old home, for
which reason many people dislike to remove until the period has
terminated from a house in which a member of the family has died,
as his spirit would have to hover over a house deserted by those he
loved.
At the end of the fifth week, packages of tea and boxes of cakes of
wheaten flour stuffed with red-bean jam are sent as return presents to
those persons who brought offerings to the dead. On the forty-ninth
day, forty-nine cakes are taken to the temple; in old times the human
body was believed to contain forty-eight bones, and if to these the
skull is added, the total becomes forty-nine, and as emblematic of
these bones, one of the cakes is made much larger than the rest. They
are offered before the dead, and after prayers have been recited and
incense burnt, the large cake is taken home and divided among the
family. A wake is sometimes kept on the night of the forty-eighth day;
and on the following day, after the service at the temple, those
who attend are taken to a restaurant and entertained, when the near
relatives, who have hitherto abstained from animal food in token of
their mourning, take it as this day ends the period of deep mourning.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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