The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation — Volume 11Hakluyt, Richard
History
The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation — Volume 11
Hakluyt, Richard
Discoveries in geography -- English; Voyages and travels
The next day returne to the place of obsequie the dead man his children,
his kindred and friends, who gathering vp his ashes, bones, and teeth, doe
put them in a gilded pot, and so carie them home, to bee set vp in the same
pot couered with cloth, in the middest of their houses. Many Bonzii returne
likewise to these priuate funerals, and so do they againe the seuenth day:
then cary they out the ashes to be buried in a place appointed, laying
thereupon a fouresquare stone, wherein is written in great letters drawen
all the length of the stone, the name of that deuil the which the dead man
worshipped in his life time. Euery day afterward his children resort vnto
the graue with roses and warme water that the dead corps thirst not. Nor
the seuenth day onely, but the seuenth moneth and yeere, within their owne
houses they renue this obsequie, to no small commodities and gaine of the
Bonzii: great rich men doe spend in these their funerals 3000 duckats or
thereabout, the meaner sort two or three hundred. Such as for pouertie be
not able to go to that charges, are in the night time darke long without
all pompe and ceremonies buried in a dunghill.
They haue another kinde of buriall, especially neere the Sea side, for them
that bee not yet dead. These fellowes are such, as hauing religiously with
much deuotion worshipped Amida, now desirous to see him, doe slay
themselues. And first they goe certaine dayes begging almes, the which they
thrust into their sleeues, then preach they in publique a sermon vnto the
people, declaring what they mind to doe, with the great good liking of all
such as doe heare them: for euery body wondreth at such a kinde of
holinesse. Then take they hookes to cut downe briars and thornes that might
hinder them in their way to heauen, and so embarke themselues in a new
vessell, tying great stones about their neckes, armes, loines, thighes, and
feete: thus they launching out into the main Sea be either drowned there,
their shippe bouged for that purpose, or els doe cast themselues ouer-boord
headlong into the Sea. The emptie barke is out of hand set a fire for
honours sake by their friends that folow them in another boat of their
owne, thinking it blasphemie that any mortall creature should afterward
once touch the barke that had bene so religiously halowed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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