I Go to the Supreme

“Nay, to this assembly I go not.”

It was the father, head of the family and clan, who spoke, and he spoke with decision; but never a thought that he was bidden to another assembly came to the daughters and relatives as they donned their best and brightest attire and set forth with crowds of caste folk from their own village and numbers of others to attend the great festival at the temple by the sea, one of the chief pilgrimages of the year.

All his life he had thought of Siva as Lord of the soul, he had thought of his soul as an animal fettered in his flesh. His soul belonged to Siva as an animal belongs to its master. But the fetter of the flesh had bound it. All he had done in the course of his religious life had, stated simply, but one object. His business was to loosen the fetters of this bound soul that it might be restored to its owner.

And now that which would for ever free it from this fetter of the flesh was upon him, and he looked death in the face.

He had worshipped in scores of temples, given alms, daily rubbed the sacred ashes, the Vzbathz, on brow, breast, arms; traced, in so far as mortal might, the intricate labyrinth of the one thousand and eight names and attributes of his god, and worshipped Siva’s wife and sons, whose images were everywhere to be seen in wayside shrine and Saivite temple. To make all safe, he had sacrificed to countless demons; there was nothing he could think of that he had left undone, nor had he ever done those things which he ought not to have done except in the matter of his daughter Star: he had yielded to her vain desire. And to secure an education for his two sons he had let them eat of Christian food.

And now all that was left was to gather into one last symbolic act his whole life’s faith. And Mimosa, trembling, saw her mother bring the box of sacred ashes to him. ‘“‘ Mark the Vibathi,” she said. With it thick and white upon him, the dread God of death would know him for Siva’s own.

But he put the ashes from him. There were no explanations. He was too ill for that. He only waved the box aside and, looking into the face of death, cried, “I go to the Supreme,” and so passed,

Then was done according to custom.

The departed spirit is not regarded by the Hindus as having passed beyond the reach of our care, and so at once, especially in the case of a parent, everything that love can suggest is done to help it. This thought is behind all and gives a dignity to the ceremonies that follow swift-footed upon death.

Quickly, in a little shelter improvised in the courtyard, Mimosa’s father was laid on a mat, and shaved, and bathed with water hurriedly brought from the nearest river, the sacred Copper-coloured river which the Greeks named long ago.

A white muslin cloth was wrapped round him now, and the consecrated ashes he had refused were rubbed on brow, breast, and arms. Then a ball of rice was laid on his mouth, and on it friends put silver coins. This was to help his disembodied spirit on the first part of its journey.

And then the weeping, wailing women, led by Mimosa’s mother, walked round and round the body, throwing their arms up, beating their breasts, tearing their loosened hair, which fell in black masses about them. And they sat down on the ground, and, rocking backwards and forwards, chanted the song that compares the dead man to all that is strong and glorious and dear. No one can sit through such a scene unmoved. It is the stuff that grief is made of, the grief that has no hope.

All this our little Mimosa heard and shared. But she was too dazed to chant, too stunned for tears. And when they carried her father forth to perform the remaining ceremonies at the cremation ground, while the conch shell was blown and a band of many instruments blared in deafening chorus, she felt that the walls of her whole life were falling down about her.