Precisely on the thirtieth day, the son and other near relatives shave, cut their nails, and put on new clothes again, giving the old clothes to the barber. Meantime invitations are sent round to the Brahmins as well as to the Soodras, requesting the favor of their presence at the _Sabha_ or assembly on the morning of the _Shrad_, and at the feast on the following day or days. On the thirty-first day, early in the morning, the son, accompanied by the officiating priest, goes to the river side, bathes and performs certain preliminary rites. Here the _rayowbhats_ and _tastirams_ (religious mendicants), who watch these things just as closely as a vulture watches a carcase, give him a gentle hint about their rights, and follow him to the house, waiting outside for their share of the articles offered to the manes of the deceased. These men were so troublesome or boisterous in former days, when the Police were not half so vigilant as they now are, that for two days successively they would continue to shout and roar and proclaim to the passers by that the deceased would never be able to go into _Boykanta_ or paradise, and that his soul would burn in hell fire until their demands were satisfied. Partly from shame, but more from a desire to avoid such a boisterous, unseemly scene, the son is forced to succumb and satisfy them in the best way he can. As the style of living among the Hindoos has of late become rather expensive, and the potent influence of vanity--purely the result of an artificial state of society--exerts its pressure even on this mournful occasion, the son, if he be well to do in the world, spends from five to six thousand Rupees on a _Shrad_; the richer, more. He has to provide for the apparently solemn purpose the following silver utensils, _viz._:--_Ghara_, _Gharoo_, _Thalla_, _Batta_, _Battee_, _Raykab_, glass, besides couch, bedding, shawls, broadcloth, a large lot of brass utensils and hard silver in cash, all which go to pay the Brahmins and Pundits, who had been invited. The waning ascendency of this privileged class is strikingly manifest on an occasion of this nature. For one or two rupees they will clamour and scramble, and unblushingly indulge in all manner of fulsome adulation of the party that invited them.[121]