BHUDDIST CEREMONIES IN CEYLON.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 5, Issue 1318, 9 April 1883, Page 3

BHUDDIST CEREMONIES IN CEYLON.

Writing to the Kundschan, a German paper, Professor Hackel gives an interesting account of a Bhuddisc ceremony to which he was invited by the chief of the village of Dena Pilya : A dozen old shorn priests in yellow robes (says the professor) received me under an immense sacred fig tree, and led me, chanting in a atrango manner, to the Temple, which was prettily decorated with flowers, and the meaning of the wall paintings (scenes from the life of .the god) was explained to me. Then I was conducted to a kind of throne erected under the shade of a group of bananas opposite tho Tempi? and' the ceremony commenced. A band of five tom-tom beaters, and as ; many flute players, began to make a noise that would soften a stone, At the same time two dancers, on stilts twelvo feet high, executed the most wonderful evolutions. Meantime the Chiefs daugbter?,'.plump, black-haired maidens, from, twelve to twonty years of 'age,' with 1 very delicately-shaped : limbs, offered toddy or palm wine in cbcoanut shells,'',and cakes and fruit. Unfortunately; I could not understand speech which the Chief addfessed to me, but I made out :,tha't be. was telling me he considered -MP** a gJ*eat honor, an idea that .was.pantominiically carried out by ten naked,.painted, and decorated dancers, who jumped madly round my throne. When I re-mounted my ox-cart at sunset to go away, I found it full of the most beautiful bananas and cocoanuts from my friendly hosts. On one occasion the Professor was present at the burning of the corpse of an aged Bhudda priest in the midst of a forest of palm?. This class is the only one which receives the honor of crema-J tion, the common people being simply •buried in their gardens or in the neighboring {ialm woods. The priest's corpse,lying on'-a- lofty bier, decorated with .flowers, was placed, on a pyre of palm sterns^-'about thirty feet high,: each' corner of which was placed against a living palm tree, while suspended above .like, a bnldachin, was a, large white sheet. The. crowd, amid the noise of ;tbm-tbms, waits eagerly for the .moment when the flames reach'this baldachin, which tho ascending heat jjVells like a great sail. When it is 'destroyed by the flames a great shout from th'e multitude sounds through the .quiet forest, for it js then that the'soul of the deceased flies to heaven.