It seems to be the idea of these putative Buddhists, the Mongols, and of their brethren, the Buriats and Kalmucks, who follow the same custom, that, since all living creatures are brothers, the least a man can do for his dumb fellow-beings is to bequeath them his useless body as nourishment—and thereby, of course, win merit that will improve his reincarnation. The Tibetans do likewise, except that they feed their mountain eagles or condors as well as their dogs, and prepare the food for the latter by mixing it with ground grain. Gruesome as the custom is, there is a thoroughness and promptitude about it which greatly outdoes the Christian mode of burial, a real and visible return of “dust to dust.” I know of no other means of disposing of the dead which gives the corpse so nearly its true value, none which leaves such a true sense of the worthlessness of human remains. Between this and the opposite extreme of an elaborate funeral followed by a showy mausoleum I am not sure but that I prefer the Mongol method.
To the Mongols themselves there is no more sanctity about their scattered bones than about any other form of rubbish. Shepherds or others whose calling brings them there wander or sit about the skull-strewn gullies quite as calmly as if they were in a field of daisies. Relatives seldom if ever come to pick up any of the remains; sometimes the rains wash broken bones down the gullies into the edge of town, where they lie until they are covered up with silt and disappear. Most of them simply disintegrate into the semi-desert soil about them. There is never a sign that the Mongol riding by feels any distress at the thought that some day these same surly black dogs that are tearing to pieces the corpse at the roadside will do the same for him. The tops of skulls, especially of higher lamas and men of standing, are sometimes used as drinking-vessels, or as oil-receptacles in the temples, and specially sainted thigh-bones make excellent whistles for use in ritualistic uproars; otherwise no one seems to have thought of the commercial possibilities of the bone-yards. Nor are these strange people, who might punish with death the stranger who forced his way into the presence of their living god, in the least sensitive about the possession of their remains. A high lama dropped in upon my host one day and chanced to spy a skull-top that had just been presented by some native admirer. He picked it up, looked it over carefully, held it up to a light, and announced that the original owner had been a very good man, proof of which was the condition of the zigzag joints and the fact that the skull was so thin in one spot that the light showed rosy red through it. Perhaps, he added, as he laid it back on the bric-à-brac table and accepted a cigarette, it had been the skull of his good old friend Lama So-and-so.
