"And it is quite musical," added the captain.
"Pronounce u like double o, and the rest of the letters as in English, and
you can speak it without choking," said the Hindu gentleman. "But there are
some letters in Hindu that have no equivalents in English."
"Moo-ui-koor-ni-ka Ghat," added Louis, pronouncing the word. "But what is
it all about?"
"It is the place for burning the dead, such as you saw in Bombay, but on a
much larger scale," replied Sir Modava. "You see that it extends a
considerable distance. Please keep to the leeward of the smoke, Captain
Carlisle."
"That is what I am doing, Sir Modava."
"These funeral pyres are burning all the time, night and day. The people
whose bodies are consumed in these fires, and their friends, believe that
the souls of the deceased will pass from this spot into paradise, where, if
they have not been very great sinners they will be transplanted into the
bodies of future Brahmins. Many deceased persons are brought even hundreds
of miles to be burned on the Munikurnika by the Ganges, as their sure
passport to the realms of bliss."
The obliging captain took the steamer near enough to the ghat to enable the
tourists to see the process of burning. An occasional puff of the horribly
offensive odor came to the nostrils of the sightseers; but the captain
sheered off, and they got very little of it.
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