The services on the death of one of these priestesses are peculiar. When at the point of death a mud idol of Siva is placed in her arms. Her mouth, eyes, nose, and ears are rubbed with holy oil, and then touched with flame obtained from a sacrificial fire, to purify from the taint of her impure life; in her hands are placed the _toolsi_[49] flowers, and her body is robed in pure white; after which she is made to repeat a hymn praying that as she has consecrated her body to the service of the gods, so may her soul be freed from rebirth and reunited to the Infinite Soul. If she is too feeble to repeat this prayer, the priests chant it in her dying ear. When life becomes extinct she is carried to a quiet spot in the vicinity of the temple, burned, and her ashes buried then and there. Sometimes a fellow-sister will plant a toolsi or moghree tree on the site, but no monument ever marks the spot where these poor priestesses of passion are cremated. These devotees are never taken in marriage; they are looked upon as the brides of their various deities; they are generally childless. If a woman happens to have a child, however, she is sole arbitress of its fate, and in no instance has she ever been known to dedicate it to the life to which she has been doomed. She generally hands it over to her parents or nearest relatives as a substitute for herself. There are hospitals and asylums for the sick, infirm, and aged of this class of women, though from all I could learn very few arrive at old age. The Cusban, or lowest class of dancing-women, is very largely recruited from runaways from these Hindoo temples, and it is said that in course of time they become the most abandoned and desperate of the native community. Even the most intelligent people, unless they have made a special study of India, can have no idea of the marked differences that exist between the Brahmans and these different classes of women. The pure Brahman, with the three other Aryan castes in so far as they have not intermarried with the aborigines, are of Caucasian type. In the northern provinces they are not brown, but of a complexion almost as fair as that of many dark Europeans. Both the men and women are distinguished by symmetry of form, fine soft hair, and beautiful eyes. Their ideal of beauty is similar to ours, with this exception: that they have adhered more closely in matters of dress to the original simplicity of form than Europeans have done.