Pharisee of Judea. There are more than two million fakirs in India, all leading lives of leisure and comparative plenty; but the prize fakir of them all on the Ganges bank was surely the well-fed and plumped out one who had all his bones painted in white outline on his brown skin, and sat comfortably in the sun, waiting for his breakfast to come to him—a living skeleton of the impressionist school. There was finally a dead fakir, propped up against a wall, covered with flower garlands, and soon to be richly spiced and committed to the Ganges, since fire is not needed to purify such holy men.
At sunrise the ghouls of the cremation-ground or burning-ghat began heaping funeral piles for the day's work, and others of this lowest caste were carrying yesterday's ashes to the water's edge, washing them in sieves and pans like any placer- miner to recover the gold, silver, and jewels burned with the bodies. The domri, who conduct cremations, surpass the Occidental undertakers in their extortionate charges—for firewood, oil, and the flaming brand for starting the blaze. Shrouded and flower-decked bodies, lashed to litters of poles, were borne down the steps and laid at the water's edge, the feet resting in the sacred river while the pyre was made ready and the relatives paid the domri and paid for prayers by the "Sons of the Ganges"—a legion of fat priests shouting under great umbrellas—brigand Brahmans of the river bank, no less mercenary and rapacious than the outcast domri, A dead woman shrouded in white and roped over with marigold chains was laid whore the foul waters
