Death, Mourning, and Burial

A Cross-Cultural Reader

Antonius C. G. M. Robben, Antonius C. G. M. Robben

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781119151760
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Anthropologie culturelle et sociale

The definitive reference on the anthropology of death and dying, expanded with new contributions covering everything from animal mourning to mortuary cannibalism

Few subjects stir the imagination more than the study of how people across cultures deal with death and dying. This expanded second edition of the internationally bestselling Death, Mourning, and Burial offers cross-cultural readings that span the period from dying to afterlife, considering approaches to this transition as a social process and exploring the great variations of cultural responses to death. Exploring new content including organ transplantation, institutionalized care for the dying, HIV-AIDs, animal mourning, and biotechnology, this text retains classic readings from the first edition, and is enhanced bysixteen new articles and two new sections which provide increased breadth and depth for readers.

Death, Mourning, and Burial, Second Edition is divided into eight parts reflecting the social trajectory of death: conceptualizations of death; death, dying, and care; grief and mourning; mortuary rituals; and remembrance and regeneration. Sections are introduced through foundational texts which provide the ideal introduction to this diverse field. It is essential reading for anyone concerned with issues of death and dying, as well as violence, terrorism, war, state terror, organ theft, and mortuary rituals.

• A thoroughly revised edition of this classic anthology featuring twenty-three new articles, two new sections, and three reformulated sections
• Updated to include current topics, including organ transplantation, institutionalized care for the dying, HIV-AIDs, animal mourning, and biotechnology
• Must reading for anyone concerned with issues of death and dying, as well as violence, terrorism, war, state terror, organ theft, and mortuary rituals
• Serves as a text for anthropology classes and provides a genuinely cross-cultural perspective to all those studying death and dying

Part I
Conceptualizations of Death

1
A Contribution to the Study of the Collective Representation of Death

Robert Hertz

We all believe we know what death is because it is a familiar event and one that arouses intense emotion. It seems both ridiculous and sacrilegious to question the value of this intimate knowledge and to wish to apply reason to a subject where only the heart is competent.

Yet questions arise in connection with death which cannot be answered by the heart because the heart is unaware of them. Even for the biologist death is not a simple and obvious fact; it is a problem to be scientifically investigated. But where a human being is concerned the physiological phenomena are not the whole of death. To the organic event is added a complex mass of beliefs, emotions and activities which give it its distinctive character. We see life vanish but we express this fact by the use of a special language: it is the soul, we say, which departs for another world where it will join its forefathers. The body of the deceased is not regarded like the carcass of some animal: specific care must be given to it and a correct burial; not merely for reasons of hygiene but out of moral obligation. Finally, with the occurrence of death a dismal period begins for the living during which special duties are imposed upon them. Whatever their personal feelings may be, they have to show sorrow for a certain period, change the colour of their clothes and modify the pattern of their usual life. Thus death has a specific meaning for the social consciousness; it is the object of a collective representation. This representation is neither simple nor unchangeable: it calls for an analysis of its elements as well as a search for its origin. It is to this double study that we wish to contribute here.

In our own society the generally accepted opinion is that death occurs in one instant. The only purpose of the two or three days’ delay between the demise and the burial is to allow material preparations to be made and to summon relatives and friends. No interval separates the life ahead from the one that has just ceased: no sooner has the last breath been exhaled than the soul appears before its judge and prepares to reap the reward for its good deeds or to expiate its sins. After this sudden catastrophe a more or less prolonged period of mourning begins. On certain dates, especially at the ‘end of the year,’ commemorative ceremonies are held in honour of the deceased. This conception of death, and this particular pattern of events which constitute death and which follow it, are so familiar to us that we can hardly imagine that they are not necessary.

But the facts from many societies less advanced than our own do not fit into this framework. As Lafitau has already pointed out, ‘In most primitive societies the dead bodies are only stored, so to speak, in the tomb where they are first placed. After a time they are given a new funeral and they receive the final funerary rites which are due to them.’ This difference in custom is not, as we shall see, a mere accident; it brings to light the fact that death has not always been represented and felt as it is in our society.

In the following pages we shall try to establish the complex of beliefs relating to death and practices featuring a double burial. To achieve this aim we shall first use data gathered exclusively from Indonesian peoples, in particular the Dayak of Borneo, among whom this phenomenon takes a typical form. We shall then show, on the basis of sources relating to other ethnographic areas, that these are not merely local customs. In our account we shall follow the sequence of the events themselves, dealing first with the period between the death (in the usual sense of the word) and the final obsequies, and then with the concluding ceremony.

1. The Intermediary Period

The ideas and practices occasioned by death can be classified under three headings, according to whether they concern the body of the deceased, his soul, or the survivors. This distinction does not by any means have an absolute value, but it does facilitate the presentation of the facts.

(a) The body: provisional burial

Among peoples of the Malay archipelago who have not yet been too deeply influenced by foreign cultures it is the custom not to take the body at once to its final burial place; this move can only be made after a more or less long period of time during which the body is placed in a temporary shelter.

The general rule, among the Dayak, seems to have been to keep the bodies of chiefs and of wealthy people inside their own houses till the time of the final burial. The body is then put in a coffin the cracks of which are sealed with a resinous substance. The Dutch Government forbade this practice, at least in certain districts, for hygienic reasons; but quite different reasons besides that of foreign interference must have limited the extent of this kind of temporary burial. The living owe all kinds of care to the dead who reside among them. There is an uninterrupted wake which, as in Ireland or among our own farmers, entails much upheaval and great expenses, but for a much longer period. Furthermore, the presence of a corpse in the house imposes taboos on the inhabitants which are often severe: an inconvenience which is strongly felt because the Dayak longhouse is frequently the whole village in itself. It is for these reasons that the prolonged exposure of the body is nowadays exceptional.

As for those deceased who do not seem to deserve such heavy sacrifices, a shelter is provided by laying the coffin, after it has been exposed for a few days, either in a miniature wooden house raised on piles or, more often, on a kind of platform simply covered by a roof. This temporary burial place is sometimes in the immediate neighbourhood of the deceased person’s house, but more often it is in a deserted place in the depth of the forest. Thus, if the deceased no longer has a place in the big house of the living, he at least possesses his own little house, one which is almost identical with those temporarily occupied by Dayak families when the cultivation of rice forces them to scatter over an area which is often very extensive.

This type of temporary burial, although apparently the most common one in the Malay archipelago, is not the only one that exists there; it may even be derived from a more ancient one which we find mentioned in several places: the exposure of the corpse, wrapped in bark, in the branches of a tree. On the other hand, instead of exposing the coffin to the atmosphere it is often preferred to bury it fairly deep, even though this means digging it up later. Whatever the variety of these customs, which often co‐exist in one place and are substituted one for the other, the rite, in its essence, is constant; the body of the deceased, while awaiting the second burial, is temporarily deposited in a burial‐place distinct from the final one; it is almost invariably isolated.

[…]

[L]et us conclude provisionally that the Indonesians attach a particular importance to the changes that occur in the corpse; their ideas in this matter prevent them from terminating the funeral rites at once and impose specific precautions and observances on the survivors.

So long as the final rite has not been celebrated the corpse is exposed to grave perils. It is a belief familiar to anthropologists and folklorists that the body is at certain times particularly exposed to the attacks of evil spirits and to all the harmful influences by which man is threatened; its diminished powers of resistance have to be reinforced by magical means. The period which follows death is particularly dangerous in this respect; that is why the corpse must be exorcised and be forearmed against demons. This preoccupation inspires, at least partly, the ablutions and various rites connected with the body immediately after death: such as, for instance, the custom of closing the eyes and other orifices of the body with coins or beads; it also imposes on the survivors the duty of keeping the deceased company during this dreaded period, to keep watch by his side and to beat gongs frequently in order to keep malignant spirits at bay. Thus the corpse, afflicted by a special infirmity, is an object of solicitude for the survivors at the same time as an object of fear.

(b) The soul: its temporary stay on earth

In the same way as the body is not taken at once to its ‘last resting‐place’, so the soul does not reach its final destination immediately after death. It must first undergo a kind of probation, during which it stays on earth in the proximity of the body, wandering in the forest or frequenting the places it inhabited while it was alive: it is only at the end of this period, at the time of the second funeral, and thanks to a special ceremony, that it will enter the land of the dead. This at least is the simplest form taken by this belief.

[…]

The stay of the soul among the living is somewhat illegitimate and clandestine. It lives, as it were, marginally in the two worlds: if it ventures into the after‐world, it is treated there like an intruder; here on earth it is an importunate guest whose proximity is dreaded. As it has no resting place it is doomed to wander incessantly, waiting anxiously for the feast which will put an end to its restlessness. It is thus not surprising that during this period the soul should be considered as a malicious being: it finds the solitude into which it has been thrust hard to bear and tries to drag the living with it. Not yet having regular means of subsistence such as the dead are provided with, it has to pilfer from its relatives; in its present distress it remembers all the wrongs it has suffered during its life and seeks revenge. It watches its relatives’ mourning sharply and if they do not properly fulfil their duties towards itself, if they do not actively prepare its release, it becomes irritated and inflicts diseases upon them, for death has endowed it with magical powers which enable it to put its bad intentions into practice. Whilst later, when it has its place among the dead, it will only visit its relatives when expressly invited, now it ‘returns’ of its own initiative through necessity or through malice, and its untimely appearance spreads terror.

This state of the soul, both pitiful and dangerous, during this confused period explains the complex attitude of the living in which pity and fear are mixed in variable proportions. They try to provide for the needs of the deceased and to ease his condition; but at the same time they remain on the defensive and refrain from contacts which they know to be harmful. When, the very next day after death, they have the soul led into the world of the dead, it is not known whether they are motivated by the hope of sparing the soul a painful wait, or by the desire to rid themselves as quickly as possible of its sinister presence; in fact both these preoccupations are mingled in their consciousness. These fears of the living can only end completely when the soul has lost the painful and disquieting character that it has after the death.

(c) The living: mourning

Not only are the relatives of the deceased compelled to devote all kinds of care towards him during the intermediary period, not only are they the target of the spite and sometimes the attacks of the tormented soul, but they are moreover subjected to a whole set of prohibitions which constitute the mourning. Death, in fact, by striking the individual, has given him a new character; his body, which (except in certain abnormal cases) was in the realm of ...