On Yuan Chwang's Travels in India, 629–645 A.D. v1.c8.s12.5

v1.c8.s12.5

As to those who have become very old, and whose time of death is approaching, who are afflicted by incurable disease and fear that their goal of life has been reached, such persons are content to separate from this world, and desire to cast off humanity, contemptuous of mortal existence and desirous to be away from the ways of the world. So their relatives and friends give them a farewell entertainment with music, put them in a boat and row them to the middle of the Ganges that they may drown themselves in it, saying that they will be born in Heaven; one out of ten will not carry out his contemptuous views.