Cremation, Caste, and Cosmogony in Karmic Traditions.

located at an altitude of 3550 metres in Manang district
in Gandaki zone, Western Nepal. The climate is arid
with an annual precipitation of approximately 400 mm.
In front of the village lies the Gangapurna glacier (fig.
9.2). During the last 150 years the glacier has decreased
and retreated approximately 1800 metres, and due to the
increase of melt-water Gangapurna Lake in front of the
glacier is less than 40 years old. The cemetery in
Manang, Tore, is located at the Gangapurna glacier’s
end-moraine. According to the local lore, the cemetery is
at least 200 years old, and the end-moraine was
deposited during the Little Ice Age, which in the
Himalayan region ended around 1850 AD. Thus, the
cemetery was made in front of the glacier’s snout, and
the funerals were performed directly in front of the
enormous masses of cold ice.
Brian Fagan argues in The Little Ice Age that although
many archaeologists are suspicious about incorporating
climatic changes, and with good reason, due to the often
inherent deterministic environmentalism, it is
nevertheless important to stress such changes. Rather
than perceiving the little ice age as a deep freeze, it
represents an irregular seesaw of rapid climatic changes,
and for a population living on the margins, small
seasonal fluctuations might be the difference between
life and death. The famines in Ireland are such examples.
Therefore, “…human relationships to the natural
environment in short-term climate change have always
been in a complex state of flux. To ignore them is to
neglect one of the dynamic backdrops of the human
experience” (Fagan 2000:xv).
The decreasing glacier enables a discussion of why and
how micro-environmental changes such as increased
amounts of melt-water may or may not be incorporated
into symbols, rituals, and cosmology, and at which level
or scale ecological and environmental changes might
become a part of the broader culture and religion. But
the problem can also be addressed in another way: why
should a religion which basically deals with eternal
entities and answering questions beyond this world
incorporate natural, cultural, and non-eternal objects that
are commonly described as maya – illusion.
Tibetan Buddhism has four main funeral practices: 1)
air-burials, 2) water-burials, 3) cremations, and 4)
inhumations. Some places they may also bury the
deceased inside the wall of a house (Peissel 1968, Boeye
& Marullo 1995), but this funeral custom has not been
practised in Manang. Traditionally cremation was for
lamas only.
Nowadays the majority of the deceased are cremated, but
poor people that cannot afford cremation may be given
air- or water burials. Inhumation as a funeral practice is
basically for persons who died from contagious diseases.
There are several reasons for the change from air-burials
to cremation as the common practice. An awareness of
the responsibility of being up-stream people contributed
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to the decline of water-burials since they polluted the
rest of the river. The increased tourism has also impacted
the decline of air-burials, but the main reason is the
immigration of Managians to Kathmandu. The majority
of Manangians do not live in Manang but in Kathmandu,
and in 2035 BS (1978 CE) a crematorium was opened at
Kang Gompa next to Vishnumati River. In the capitol
the traditional practice of performing air-burials was
impossible and cremation succeeded as the common
funeral practice. Although lamas and high-status people
were cremated when common people were given airburials
in the village, gradually cremation became the
dominant and preferred mode of disposal among
everybody. Thus, the change in the funeral practice in
Manang was partly due to the migration of the majority
of the village’s inhabitants to the city where the practice
of air-burials could not precede, and the change in
Kathmandu had a feedback effect on the funeral practice
in the village.
In Manang, the deceased is cremated in a special
crematorium, which is the foundation of a chorten (figs.
9.3-9.4). A chorten is a small stupa, and a stupa is a
funerary mount or a Buddhist ancestral monument.
Every stupa or chorten symbolises the original stupas
were the bone-relics and ashes of Buddha are buried.
Three chortens in a row symbolise the Three Jewels in
Buddhism; Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Buddha is the
Enlightened one, Dharma is the essence of the religion,
or the teaching of how to achieve the enlightened state,
and Sangha is a community of worshippers or a monastic
order of monks and nuns (Thurman 1994:14-15).
The deceased sits in the crematorium in the Buddhaposition
during the cremation. Some days later, the burnt
human bones together with ingredients like wheat,
buckwheat, chilli, garlic, bark of juniper, ashes, and rice,
are ground into a powder and mixed with clay by the
deceased’s relatives, and made into 108 figures called
chatafars, symbolising small chortens (fig. 9.5). After
the cremation, the crematorium is completed and built as
a chorten, which works as a family memorial. The
majority of the chatafars are buried inside the chorten
where the deceased was cremated. The Managian people
are not making a new chorten each time a person dies. If
the family already has a chorten or family memorial,
then they may use another crematorium-structure (or a
non-completed chorten) for the cremations of their
relatives. Afterwards the bones are made into chatafars
and the majority of those are placed among several
others within the original family chorten. The remaining
chatafars are distributed at different spots in the village
or in nature; behind the praying-wheels at mani-walls, in
other chortens along the roadside or in caves at
auspicious places (fig. 9.6-9.7). The Manangian people
have been traders in the South-east Asia for the last two
centuries, and if any of them died abroad, a number of
chatafars with the deceased’s remains were in some
cases carried back to Manang.