Word: pyre
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...woman," says an old Hindu maxim, "there is no god on earth other than her man." The most extreme form of this belief was the custom dictating that the widow fling herself on her husband's funeral pyre. Enlightened British rule put a legal end to the practice of suttee (widow suicide), but the widow's lot has remained a poor one. Under Hindu laws, widows are not permitted to wear jewelry, bright clothing, makeup. They cannot attend wedding or birthday celebrations. Under strict laws of inheritance dating back 3,000 years, a Hindu's property...
...Monstrous Pyre. Since October 1949, when the Chinese Communists officially set up the Chinese People's Republic, Hsiao Mieh, by the account of Red China's press, has been written officially against the names of millions of Chinese. Foreign specialists, carefully sifting reports from refugees and other sources, estimate that at least 20 million Chinese have been deprived of existence, done away with, or otherwise disposed of. This does not include 23 million believed to be held in forced labor camps...
...time of Hitler, have so many people been destroyed in so short a period. Because it is hard for the mind to visualize so vast a slaughter in human terms, the Communists have been able to reap an advantage from the very size of their funeral pyre: many Westerners, finding the monstrous incredible, cannot see the blood on the hand of pretended friendship proffered by Chinese Communist Leader Mao Tse-tung...
Hanging is an old Anglo-Saxon custom. In the 13th century, punishment by death, in forms varying from the headsman's ax to the witch's pyre, was imposed as a deterrent for virtually every crime on the books. More than five centuries later, there were still some 200 crimes (including poaching) punishable by death in England. Children as young as seven were hanged. The first sweeping move toward clemency was not made until 1835, when these 200 mortal crimes were cut to four -high treason, murder, piracy, and setting fire to the royal dockyards and arsenals...
Confronted with the dead body, men have asked themselves at various times: "Shall we lay it in a boat that is set adrift? . . . Shall we expose it to wild animals? Burn it on a pyre? Push it into a pit naked to rot with other bodies? Boil it until the flesh falls off the bones, and throw the flesh away and treasure the bones?" Primitive peoples discovered that, by devouring a dead body, they did not acquire its spirit; with that insight, as myths tell it, the original oneness of spirit and body, heaven and hell, was torn asunder...