unions as undesirable in the extreme.

The Penal Code forbids water burial, and also cremation; but it is
permitted to the children of a man dying at a great distance to consume
their father's corpse with fire if positively unable to bring it back
for ordinary burial in his native district. The idea is that with the
aid of fire immediate communication is set up with the spirit-world,
and that the spirit of the deceased is thus enabled to reach his native
place, which would be impossible were the corpse to remain intact. Hence
the horror of dying abroad, common to all Chinese, and only faced if
there is a reasonable probability that their remains will be carried
back to the ancestral home.

In spite of the above law, the cremation of Buddhist priests is
universal, and the practice is tolerated without protest. Priests who
are getting on in years, or who are stricken with a mortal disease, are
compelled by rule to move into a certain part of their monastery, known
as the Abode of a Long Old Age, in which they are required--not to die,
for death does not come to a good priest, but--to enter into Nirvana,
which is a sublime state of conscious freedom from all mental and
physical disturbance, not to be adequately described in words. At death,
the priest is placed in a chair, his chin supported by a crutch, and
then put into a wooden box, which on the appointed day is carried in
procession, with streaming banners, through the monastery, and out into
the cremation-ground attached, his brother priests chanting all the
while that portion of the Buddhist liturgies set apart as the service
for the dead, but which being in Pali, not a single one of them can
understand. There have, of course, been many highly educated priests at
one time and another during the long reign of Buddhism in China; but
it is safe to say that they are no longer to be met with in the present