Travels in India (Tavernier) 123: CHAPTER VIII · Concerning the idolaters custom of burning the bodies of the deceased.

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The custom among the Gentiles of burning bodies after death is very ancient; they generally burn them on the banks of rivers, where they wash the bodies of the deceased to complete the cleansing of those sins from which they have not been purified during life. This superstition goes to such extremes that very often sick persons, when on the point of death, are carried to the margin of a river or tank, and their feet are placed in the water. According as nature fails the body is pushed forwards, and at last it is held by the chin only, so that at the moment when the spirit departs and leaves the body, both the one and the other can be purged of all defilement by plunging the body wholly into the water, after which it is burned in the same place, which is always close to some pagoda. There are people who make it their business to collect wood, and there is a fixed rate of payment for their trouble.
When an idolater is dead, all those of his caste or tribe who are in the place assemble at the house of the deceased, and the body having been placed on a litter covered by some fine cloth, according to the station of the defunct and the property which he has left, they accompany it to the place where it is to be burnt, following the litter, which is carried on the shoulders of those appointed for that duty. They always proceed chanting some prayers to their god, and calling out Rám, Rám, and, while carrying the body, there is some one who sounds a small bell to give notice to the living to pray for the deceased. The body having arrived at the margin of the river or tank, it is plunged into the water, and afterwards burnt. This is done in three different ways, as I shall describe in the following chapter. According to the wealth of the deceased, there is mingled with the ordinary wood which is collected for burning, more or less sandal-wood or other scented wood.
But the idolaters not only burn dead bodies; their cruel superstition goes further, for they also burn the bodies of the living. They make scruple about killing a serpent, and even a bug, yet they regard it as a highly meritorious action to cause a living woman to be burnt in the fire together with the body of her deceased husband.