If the cow emitted urine upon the person, it was considered a most salutary purification. If the fluid fell plentifully upon the expiring man, his friends testified their joy by loud acclamation, believing he was about to be numbered among the blessed. But when the cow did not supply the purifying liquid, the relatives showed their grief, for they thought their dying friend was going to a place of punishment. At Assam and elsewhere, when a person was sick, sacrifices were offered to the god of the four winds. If the patient died, servants were kept beating on instruments of copper to keep away evil spirits, supposed to be hovering round the corpse. There was a belief that if an evil spirit passed over a dead body, the soul would return to the inanimate remains. At a funeral procession, men surrounded the coffin with drawn scimitars, to drive the devil away and help to confine him to his home of darkness. At a king's death, all his wives, ministers of state, and retainers surrounded the grave, and poisoned themselves, in order to accompany him into the other world. Horses, camels, elephants, and hounds were also interred along with his majesty, to be useful to him in the world of bliss. In Pegu, the people believed in an eternal succession of worlds, and imagined that, as soon as one would be burned, another would spring out of its ashes. They thought that people devoured by crocodiles went to a place of perpetual happiness. The people believed that asses had human souls, and, reversing the theory of Darwin that human beings were the offspring of inferior animals, thought they were formerly men; but, to punish them for crimes they had been guilty of, the gods transformed them into their present shape. White elephants were much esteemed by the people. As the devil was worshipped, altars were erected in honour of him, and sacrifices were daily offered to appease his wrath and obtain his favour. Devout persons refused to taste food, before throwing part of it behind them for the dogs or devils to eat; for they imagined that every dog was possessed with evil spirits, if the animal was not Satan himself. It sometimes happened that a man left his house, swept clean and genteelly furnished, for the devil to take possession of it for a whole month.