Cremation, Caste, and Cosmogony in Karmic Traditions.

while unmarried girls and boys without bartamande, are
buried.
Thirdly, the widow’s jewellery in her husband’s funeral.
When the Householder dies, the widow changes her
status in the society as well as in the household. She
becomes partly stigmatised, she is neither socially
allowed to marry again nor does any man want to marry
her. Still she has to carry out some of her husband’s
duties as a Householder, and thus she gets other
responsibilities and obligations in the family. Because
she leaves one position in society and enters a new social
role, the widow has to mark this transition. She has to
dispose of all things her husband was responsible for and
obliged to give her. In the house she will take off her
jewellery and break the bracelets and place them on the
deceased husband’s chest. Thereafter he is carried to the
cemetery, and either cremated or buried with his wife’s
jewellery on his chest (fig. 13.3). The widow will also
change her clothes and take off the tika (a mark of
blessing placed on the forehead). The widow is in a
sense morally responsible for her husband’s death and
must expiate the misfortune she has brought on him for
the rest of her life. She has become a “half corpse”
(Parry 1994:174).
The deceased’s life cycle rituals are expressed in the
funeral rites and transformative elements are used as
means to another end (fig. 13.4). Life itself is a
transformation, between different stages, through death,
to other forms of life. All these transformations may be
seen as samsara, the life cycle or ”round of birth and
death”, and the aim is mukti, release or salvation from
these transformations. As means to the final end, the
most important features in this life are incorporated in
the most dangerous change between these conditions;
death. The next life requires that these transformation
processes in the deceased’s life have taken place because
of their importance for the person’s karma. Similarly,
these transformations are expressed as distinctions
between the life cycle rituals: pasne, bartamande and
marriage. Pasne is the first vital life cycle ritual where
the child is initiated into the world of rice, that is, food
and further life. In bartamande and marriage the
emphasis is laid on the regeneration of life in two ways.
Firstly, with karma caleko the person enters samsara and
becomes fully responsible for actions and ritual purity.
Secondly, after these initiation rites, men and woman are
allowed and obliged to have children. Hence life is
continued both morally and carnally.
Thus, the life cycle rituals are concerned with Being in a
broad sense, and the most important features in this
existence are transformed into death, that is the
regeneration of life, time and cosmos. There is, however,
a last initiation rite after the householder stage, which is
the spiritual state of being an ascetic or holy man. The
inherent bodily qualities of a sadhu or saint necessitate a
special treatment of the flesh. In Tibet, “there exists, so
they said, certain human beings who have attained such
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a high degree of spiritual perfection, that the original
material substance of their bodies has become
transmuted into a more subtle one which possesses
special qualities…A morsel of their transformed flesh,
when eaten, will produce a special kind of ecstasy and
bestow knowledge and supernormal powers upon the
person partaking of it” (David-Neel 1931:133-134). All
tantric yogis have to practice meditation in cemeteries.
In some rituals it is necessary for the yogi to sit in
solitary meditation upon a corpse, especially during the
dark hours of night, in other rituals he has to make a
pillow of the corpse and even sleep in that posture.
Accordingly, Jetsün (Milarepa) practiced such
meditation and made a pillow of his mother’s bones
(Evans-Wentz 1951:175). The “ideal” cremation is
perhaps the one of Milarepa; “The very smoke emitted
the sweet odour of different kinds of incense, its eddies
assuming various rainbow colours and the shapes of
[royal] umbrellas and banners. The sky directly above
the funeral was full of angelic beings bearing vessels of
nectar, which they poured down in showers. Others bore
celestial food and drink, unguents and perfumes, and
objects of delight for the five senses, with which every
human being assembled there was regaled” (ibid:287).
Whereas Buddhist yogis are cremated or self-immolate,
Hindu yogis are buried. Dubois (1953) notes that when a
sannyasi yogi in Hinduism is dead the corpse is buried in
a pit close to a river. The grave is about six feet deep and
circular in form in which the deceased is placed with his
legs crossed. Then the hole is filled with salt until it
reaches the neck of the sadhu. The head, which still is
exposed, is covered by innumerable coconuts that are
broken until the skull is completely fractured. This is
done to release the prana (life), which is believed to be
imprisoned in the skull. The coconut is a particularly
auspicious fruit because it represents the human head.
The hard skull-like shell contains a brain-like flesh and
juice-like blood (Svoboda 1998:30). Then salt is again
thrown on the dead until it covers the remains of the
deceased’s head. Above the grave the funeral
participants erect a platform on which they place a
lingam made of earth approximately two feet high
(Dubois 1953:539). This practice is also described in The
Siva-Puranas; liberated ascetics are not cremated but
buried in a pit and the skull shall be split with a coconut
together with chanting of mantras (Siva-Purana IV, p.
1765). The sannyasi sadhus wear orange-red clothes
symbolising fire, and as such they live in the cremation
fire and have therefore transcended it, and consequently
they receive inhumation as the auspicious mode of
disposing of the flesh. The ascetics have already offered
themselves to the gods, and the tapa of an ascetic is said
to burn him internally so he is not cremated (Das
1990:123). Firewalkers have pushed the symbolic
system of being immersed in flames to its end, without
being burnt (Hocart 1970b:158).