Mahâ-Parinibbâna-Suttanta: The Book of the Great Decease

So in Ceylon, Robert Knox--whose rare and curious work, one of the most trustworthy books of travels extant, deserves more notice than it has received, and who was a captive there for many years before the natives were influenced by any contact with Europeans--says[3], 'It may not be unacceptable to relate how they burn their dead. As for persons of inferior quality, they are interred in some convenient places in the woods (there being no set places for burial), carried thither by two or three of their friends, and buried without any more ado. They lay them on their backs, with their heads to the West, and their feet to the East, as we do. Then these people go and wash: for they are unclean by handling the dead. [1. I have not been able to trace any reference to either of these Chinese works in Mr. Edkins's 'Chinese Buddhism.' 2. See Max Müller in Z. D. M. G., vol. ix. 3. 'Knox's 'Historical Relation of Ceylon,' Part III, Chap. xi.] p. xl 'But persons of greater quality are burned, and that with ceremony. When they are dead they lay them out, and put a cloth over their privy parts; and then wash the body, by taking half a dozen pitchers of water and pouring upon it. Then they cover him with a linen cloth, and so carry him forth to burning. This is when they burn the body speedily. But otherwise they cut down a tree that may be proper for their purpose, and hollow it like a hog-trough, and put the body, being disembowelled and embalmed, into it, filling up all about with pepper, and so let it lie in the house until it be the king's command to carry it out to the burning. For that they dare not do without the king's order if the person deceased be a courtier. Sometimes the king gives no order in a great while; it may be not at all: therefore, in such cases, that the body may not take up house-room or annoy them, they dig a hole in the floor of their house, and put hollowed tree and all in, and cover it. If afterwards the king commands to burn the body, they take it up again, in obedience to the king-otherwise there it lies.