India is a mysterious country. A country with its own traditions, culture and customs. Sometimes all these features seem to the average tourist a little wild, but nothing can be done about it. These are the cultural and moral values of another people, we can only take all this for granted. Today we will touch upon a very piquant topic that will concern how people are buried in India. It must be said right away that there are many features in this process.
Religion
What religion is in India? Hinduism is the main religion of the country. If you delve into its essence, then Hinduism, like Buddhism, describe the death of the human body only as the end of one of their lives, after death, a person is reborn with a transition to some other entity.
In order for the degeneration of the human soul to proceed without problems and correctly, a qualitative liberation of the soul from the flesh is required. Flesh for this must be adequately destroyed. This is an important point. According to religious doctrine, if the body of the deceased will be repose of poor quality, then the evil fate that befell the flesh will be reflected in all members of the human race.
By evil fate is understood the eternal wandering of a dead person between the worlds of the living and the gods. In general, Indians believe that all of their deceased ancestors for some time are deities for descendants, which is why it is not worth angering deities with a poor-quality burial procedure. We make a reservation that, according to the Indians, their close relatives are the subject of veneration up to about three generations.
Cremation
Most preferred funeral option in India. This is a very costly undertaking. Burning the body of a deceased person costs a considerable amount to relatives. It is worth noting that the best city for such events is Varanasi. Inhabitants of India call this settlement a funeral city. But there are other ways of burial of the body that the inhabitants of the country use if the bonfire for cremation (funeral pyre) is not affordable for a relative of a deceased person.
Cremation fireplace
A fireplace is made not less than one meter high; approximately five kilograms of firewood is taken for each kilogram of the weight of a deceased person. Wealthy families for the funeral pyre choose wood such as sandalwood and other elite expensive species. For poor people, there are simpler grades; I must say that wood in India is always very expensive.
The poorest citizens for the bonfire take the things of a deceased person, which would be useful to him in another world before reincarnation. And yet, the main criterion is not the relevance of things in the afterlife, but its combustible properties.
Rich people throw diamonds in the bonfire and rare amber highly valued in India. Before the cremation begins, the son of the deceased person throws a special sacrificial mixture (rice and sesame) into the river, this is done so that the soul freed from the body could be embodied in a special temporary shell.
After that, the body of the deceased person is hoisted onto the folded firewood, which are folded in a special way and poured with ghee and special aromatic liquids, and the son of the deceased person lights a fire with a torch and reads a prayer. Other family members at this moment shout and loudly mourn the deceased person with special ritual lamentations.
The scratching of their faces and the loud screams of the women who are present at the ceremony are not deprived. In addition, women must occasionally fall to the ground and fight in sobs.
Around the middle of the entire cremation procedure, the son breaks the skull of a half-burned corpse with a special wooden stick, this gives a hundred percent guarantee for the soul to leave the body if it has not yet left the body of the deceased person. After the fire has completely died out, the participants in the funeral ceremony are cleaned with running water of the river, if there is no river nearby, then they are washed with sesame water.
To completely cleanse the soul of a deceased person, it is necessary to quickly make the first sacrifice from a mixture of rice, sesame and vegetables. Four days after the cremation ceremony, all participants in the funeral come to the site of the bonfire and perform a special ceremony, which consists of collecting the remains of bones, which, together with the ashes, are loaded into the funeral urn from clay. The urn is temporarily dug into the ground (about half in height or volume). A few days later, the ashes from the urn are scattered through the air over a river or lake.
Who is forbidden to burn
There are some nuances in cremation. There are categories of citizens who are not cremated. These include:
- Young children under the age of thirteen.
- Monks and other sadhus (people who have renounced the world with its joys and have dedicated their lives to spiritual practices).
- Pregnant women.
- Single girls.
- Poor people who don’t have money for cremation.
- People with leprosy.
- People who died from a cobra bite.
Let us dwell on the last category. It is noteworthy that in India it is believed that the person who was bitten by a cobra did not die, but is in a coma, for this very reason, burning it is something inhuman and cruel murder.
A person bitten by a cobra is wrapped in a film and immersed in a boat, which is made from a banana tree. A sign is attached to a person with his name and home address and pushed into the river. Sadhu monks who meditate on the banks of the river try to catch these people from the river. This is done in order to try to bring them back to life through their meditations.
It is difficult to conclude whether the monks manage to do this or not, but, undoubtedly, such an attempt is in all respects a very noble and worthy act. There is a belief according to which one sadhu who meditated on the river managed to revive a person bitten by a cobra. The family of this man was very happy and offered unknown wealth to the monk, but he refused to take this award in accordance with his sacred vow.
The value of rivers
India is a country that preserves many customs of antiquity. And if the funeral in India would be standard for the average citizen of our country, it would be strange. India is exotic in everything, even in moments like funerals.
The Ganges River in India, however, like some other rivers, is used for rites of burial of people. We must say right away that the type of burial of bodies using a river is not an option for wealthy citizens. An alternative to using the river for the poor is to bury the body in the ground. But still, the use of the Ganges River in India as a cemetery is a more common event. What other bodies of water do they use?
The Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers are especially honored. The bodies of those people who during their life were considered holy or consecrated are sent here. Traditions are such that people who are classified as saints or initiates do not require the purification of the soul by fire, since their souls were pure during life. In addition, funeral rituals for children and pregnant women (sometimes women who died during labor) are sometimes performed in water bodies.
Body preparation
The preparation of the body of the deceased among the Indians for funeral rituals is held according to the customs of Brahmanism. To be precise, these events begin even during the life of a dying man, at the moment when it becomes clear to everyone that his death is already close and inevitable.
A dying person is laid on the floor in the room of the house (the veranda of the house or on the ground outdoors). As his soul departs into another world, his family members are next to him and simply pray. With the help of prayers, the departure of the soul from the mortal body is accelerated. The soul goes into one of the ten openings of the human body. There is a belief according to which the righteous soul will leave through the crown, mouth, nose or ears, and the sinful soul will leave the body strictly through the anal passage.
Immediately after death, according to the Indian rite, the deceased person is wrapped in cloth, and a betel nut is scattered around him. Most often this is done by his son, who is the main person in conducting the entire funeral rite. If the family of the deceased person does not have a son, then a special brahmana is invited to conduct the funeral rite, but, as religion says, it is better to have a son.
Indian traditions are such that the body of the deceased must be buried one day after death. Before the funeral, you need to shave the hair on the head and beard (if any). If a woman dies, then her hair is singed with a special torch, and then her body is wiped with incense oils and wrapped in another robe.
After these procedures, the deceased person is decorated with bright wicker flower garlands, and also various religious signs are painted on his face, and rice and betel are strewed on his forehead.
Then, with the help of a stretcher, the deceased person is brought to the place of his future burning (if the option of cremation of the body is chosen), stopping for prayers on the way to the established place. At this time, all the women who attend the funeral lament and cry loudly, tearing their clothes on. The ideal option at a funeral in India is when mourning a deceased person takes the form of long, sad and mournful recitations.
After burial
After all the measures for the burial of the body, the family of the deceased person must put two stones in honor of the event. One stone is placed at home, and the second on the shore of the pond closest to the house. The stones will become a kind of symbol of the spirit of the deceased person. The next ten days after the funeral of people in India, it is supposed to perform rituals of libation with water over the stones, as well as to make sacrifices of various cereals. Also during the year (once a month) in honor of the deceased person sacrifices are made in the form of food.
After a year, several special brahmanas are invited to commemorate among other people, they make sacrifices, and also read a prayer, which is called for the remission of sins to a dead person. In ancient times, the blood of an animal was required to conduct this ritual, but in modern India, blood was replaced with grain, vegetables and fruits.
Wealthy people in India sometimes put special small stone mausoleums for their dead ancestors with various carved bas-reliefs. Places for the mausoleum are selected on sacred lands, if possible. If this is not possible, then the mausoleum is placed near the water. Plots of stone bas-reliefs usually tell about the life of the gods (most often Shiva and Parvati).
Indian Muslims and Christians
All Muslims and Christians who live in India carry out the burial of their deceased loved ones according to the traditions of their religions. This is done in special cemeteries, with the installation of appropriate monuments on the graves. These memorials are made according to all the customs of religion (Islam or Christianity). Other religions in India are calm. There is no harassment from either the residents or the authorities. What religion is considered the main one in India? Hinduism is considered the main religion, but no one inclines to this religion, everything happens on a voluntary basis.
Funeral in India
The way people are buried in India is a whole ceremony about which scientific papers can be written. Especially important is not the procedure itself, but the explanation of all the details and nuances of this process. Many say that a more symbolic event than the Indian funeral rite cannot be found in any other country or culture of the world.
No less striking is the behavior of all the people who participate in the burial of their loved ones and relatives. But all this becomes understandable if you constantly keep in mind the doctrine of the transmigration of human souls, which is an integral part of Hinduism as a religion (according to statistics, more than eighty percent of the Indian population profess Hinduism).
Total
Today you learned how to bury people in India in various ways. Of course, we must admit that for us some moments in the burial place seem a little strange and even sometimes wild. But this is the tradition of a country far away for us. Perhaps for a resident of India, the funeral in our country also looks strange.
A feature of the procedure can be considered the difference between rituals, for example, for the funeral of children and adults. Although this is not one feature of the burial traditions in India. For us, everything seems unusual and special. However, this is the difference between religions, cultures and other things.
Very often, the surprise of foreigners who observe the burial process borders on amazement and even horror. Tourists are most struck by the fact that ashes, the remains of dead people and even corpses are dumped into the river, and here the locals drink water from this river and bathe in it.
There are published data from laboratory examinations of river water in India. Research was conducted by the Discovery Channel. The whole world, except India, was horrified. An incredible amount of germs, infections and other things were found in water samples. Apparently, there are such things in our mortal world that you can understand only when you live next to them. This also applies exactly to the question of how people are buried in India.