NEW DELHI, India -- The body of slain Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, set aflame by her weeping son Saturday, burned for two hours on a bed of flowers and sandalwood in an ancient Hindu cremation ceremony to ensure safe passage of the soul.
About 200,000 weeping mourners on the banks of the sacred Yamuna River watched as the corpse was consumed by a huge fire set by Rajiv Gandhi, her son and successor, and fueled by vast quantities of clarified butter.
Wrapped in a scarlet and gold sari and surrounded by red and white flowers, the body of 'Mother India,' who dominated the political life of the world's most populous democracy for nearly 20 years, was reduced to ashes in about two hours.
The ashes will be gathered Sunday to be scattered later over parts of the land of 720 million.
The final rites were conducted by family priest Pandit Girdharilal Goswamin, who performed the same service for her younger son, Sanjay, after his death in the crash of a stunt plane four years ago and for her father, Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister, in 1964.
Gandhi's body was borne through the streets of New Delhi to the grassy Shanti Vana -- woodland of peace -- on a flower-bedecked gun carriage pulled by a military truck. Solemn drum beats sounded as the procession moved slowly down seven miles of dusty New Delhi streets.
There were between 200,000 and 300,000 people lining the route to the cremation site -- a small crowd by Indian standards. It appeared that mob violence sweeping the nation since Gandhi's slaying Wednesday kept many people away from the ceremonies.
Many wept, some mumbled words of prayer and young men in the front rows jostled with baton-wielding police.
Concerned about the safety of the representatives of 104 nations and international organizations invited to the ceremony, security forces kept watch on the crowds from armored personnel carriers with mounted cannons, light tanks and Soviet-built MI-8 helicopters circling overhead.
Rajiv, 40, served as chief pallbearer when the body was lifted from the gun carriage to the concrete-and-brick cremation platform.
Wearing traditional white Hindu garb -- short trousers, a long shirt and a narrow white cap -- Rajiv walked around the body seven times with a flaming torch.
Then, at 3:49 p.m. local time, in a gesture representing the final break from the world of the living, he touched the torch to a 'fireball' of sandalwood that had been soaked in butter oil and placed in the mouth of his mother's corpse.
Flames licked at the 1,100 pounds of sandalwood piled around the body. Tears streaked down Rajiv's cheeks as the pyre burned.
A Hindu priest chanted hymns from the Sanskrit Vedas -- Hindu scriptures -- over a loudspeaker and Indian Air Force jets roared overhead.
From time to time, Rajiv poured oil of clarified butter on the flames.
After the body had burned for nearly an hour, Rajiv pushed a long rod into the pyre to break the skull and release the soul of his mother from all memory of past sorrow, according to Hindu belief.
'Indira Gandhi amar rahe' -- Indira Gandhi is immortal -- the crowd chanted as the funeral pyre died with the setting sun.
