Hindu Polity: A Constitutional History of India in Hindu Times c29.16

c29.16

Mr. Smith relies on a Chinese legend saying that the Buddha at Vaiśālī observed a cemetery under a clump of trees and had the cemetery described to him by Rishis: "In that place, the "corpses of men are exposed to be devoured by the birds; and "there also they collect and pile up the white bones of dead persons, "as you perceive; they burn corpses there also and preserve the "bones in heaps. They hang dead bodies also from the trees; "there are others buried there, such as have been slain and put "to death by their relatives, dreading lest they should come to "life again; whilst others are left there upon the ground that they "may return, if possible, to their former homes."¹ Now this, is the passage (I have quoted it in full) upon which the whole theory of the exposure of the dead is based and on the basis of which Mr. Smith has considered the Lichchhavis to have been of Tibetan origin. The passage is from a legend in China of about 1,000 years later than the time of the Buddha, and as such it is worthless as a piece of historical evidence for contemporary details. But the passage, however, as it stands, is innocent. To one acquainted with the standard dramas of Sanskrit literature and the social and religious customs of the orthodox Hindus as they have prevailed, the passage connotes differently, in its natural way. A typical *Śmaśāna*, 'cremation ground,' is what is described. In some cases, as it is enjoined in the Dharma Sāstra a dead body cannot be burnt but has to be either buried or exposed, or in the language of Manu, "to be thrown in the forest like a log of wood"² (and for that I hope no one including orientalists would dare to call the author of the Mānava Code a Tibetan or Pārsī). Dramas and fictions in Sanskrit are full of allusions to men being executed at the *Śmaśāna* and people hanging themselves by a tree in the *Śmaśāna* grounds. The practice of laying the dead body in hope of recovery is observed even to-day.