cremation. According to her oft-repeated desire, the body was bathed in the Ganges and was carried in a bier decorated with flowers, on the shoulders of pious devotees. Some of the prominent disciples of Sri Ramakrishna, like Swami Saradananda, Swami Shivananda and Master Mahasaya, accompanied by several respectable persons of the city, followed the procession, which at times swelled to thousands. By about 2 p.m. the body was consigned to the flames at a spot near the Ganges, within the Belur Math compound.
Today, beside the vivid impressions of her in the minds of devoted disciples, there are three shrines that specially commemorate her life and doings. In the Belur Math there is a beautiful small temple facing the Ganges, built on the spot where her body was cremated. In the shrine of the Udbodhan Office, her portrait is kept facing that of the Master, just as she used to face it in her lifetime. And lastly, at the village of ]ayrambati, in the compound where she was born, the devotion of Swami Saradananda has erected a temple
1 in her memory, with a monastery attached to it. In that shrine is installed a life-size oil painting of hers, and in the solemn stillness and holy atmosphere of that sanctuary, seated before the Mother's portrait - bearing a mild and meek, yet serene and digfiified expression - one still gets a brooding sense of the Mother-Heart that was embodied as Sarada Devi, the Holy Mother.
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1 The reference here is to the old temple which existed in 1940 when the first edition of this book was published. Since then a beautiful and well-designed temple has been built at Jayrambati on the occasion of the Holy Mother's Birth Centenary celebrated in 1954.