Asa, king of Judah, was also consigned to the funeral pyre, as we glean from II. Chronicles xvi. 14: “And they buried him in his own sepulchres, which he had made for himself in the city of David, and laid him in the bed which was filled with sweet odors and divers kinds of spices prepared by the apothecaries’ art; _and they made a very great burning of him_.” Of Asa’s grandson, King Jehoram, it is said that his people cremated him not like his fathers, because he had furthered idolatry. On the other hand, Isaiah xxx. 33 refers to a large pyre that was kept alight to consume the bodies of the deceased: “For Tophet is ordained of old; yea, for the king it is prepared; he hath made it deep and large; the pile thereof is fire and much wood; the breath of the Lord like a stream of brimstone doth kindle it.” Jeremiah (xxxiv. 5) prophesied of Zedekiah, another king of Judah, that he would be burned with the same honors that attended the cremation of his predecessors. And in Amos vi. 10, we find the following, which also points to incineration: “And a man’s uncle shall take him up, and he that burneth him, to bring out the bones out of the house,” etc. The last passage cited and the one mentioning the Vale of Tophet, are construed by some writers as meaning that the ancient Jews had recourse to cremation in great plagues; _id est_, for hygienic reasons. Now, although these quotations plainly show that the Israelites of old did execute incineration, we also learn from them that the practice was never general; at first confined to criminals, at last to kings. It is impossible to determine when the custom of burning the dead originated among the Hindoos. It was always connected with religious observances, and known to the people of India since the earliest times. It was restricted to certain classes or castes: mainly to Brahmins and warriors. The merchants, mechanics, and the tillers of the soil were interred. Children under two years of age were barred from cremation, and had to be buried in the earth. Some religious sects, however, were an exception from this rule and executed cineration indiscriminately—for instance the believers in Vishnu. When a Hindoo died away from home, or when his body was lost and could not be found, his relatives instituted a symbolical ceremony. They gathered 360 leaves of a certain shrub and as many woolen threads. They were under the impression that the human body consisted of 360 parts. Of the threads and leaves they formed a figure, somewhat resembling the human form, which was wound round with a strip of the hide of a black antelope, which had also been previously wrapped closely round with woolen thread. This figure was then besmeared with barley-meal and water and burnt as an effigy of the missing body.