University of Virginia Library

SOME IMPLICATIONS OF MORTUARY RITES ASSOCIATED
WITH NORMAL DEATH

The mortuary rites show a pattern of double obsequies which can be
analysed in Hertz's terms (Hertz 1960). The intervals between death,
cremation, and collection of bones are brief in this north-eastern village[7]
(in Bangkok and other urban centres it is much longer, and is graduated
in relation to the social status of the deceased). The ideas that soon after
death the winjan is a phii with dangerous powers, that the corpse attracts
malevolent spirits, and that in a general sense death can be dangerous
for the living are present in a clear form. The collection of bones after
cremation, their cleansing and burial, followed by merit-making for the
deceased, are generally concerned with separating the winjan from this
world, despatching it to the next (and then rebirth), and at the same
time with converting the winjan from the status of pret to ancestor.

The outstanding theme is the objective of leading the dead man's
winjan to heaven and making possible a better rebirth. Monks and laymen
do all they can to achieve this. We have seen that while the ritual manifests

anxiety about the potential malevolence of the winjan, and ensures against
any such possibility, it also shows a marked optimism, as in the prasaat
peueng presentation, that with the help of the living the winjan will in
fact go to heaven. A conspicuous feature is the direct participation of
monks and the direct incorporation of Buddhist ideas and mythology in
the rites. In no other rite of passage—excepting ordination for monkhood
—is Buddhism so directly concerned with a human event. The monks
not only act as mediators between death and rebirth, but also absorb
and neutralize the dangers and pollution of death. Their religious status
makes them immune to these dangers.

From the point of view of interpreting ritual, we have seen that the
actors may give multiple or diverse meanings to the same ritual act. The
monks' version, pitched in Buddhist terms, may be slightly different
from that of laymen, who in turn may show differences among themselves.
However, in the case of mortuary rites, interpretations seem to converge
around some basic ideas associated with death and its aftermath. Where
death is concerned the actors on the whole appear to have conscious
ideas about the meaning of their acts which the anthropologist also often
finds adequate. Such a close correspondence was lacking when we dealt
with the cycle of wat rituals.

From a comparative point of view, it is striking that there is a common
idiom in the mortuary ceremonies of the Buddhists of Thailand, Burma
and Ceylon. Thailand and Burma show a remarkable similarity in the
sequences and verbalizations of the actors; Ceylon, however, while
distinctly portraying the Buddhist orientation to death, has more elaborate
notions of death pollution, stemming from the caste system.

In the case of Burma, sources such as Shway Yoe (1896) and Manning
Nash (1965) report some details which in essentials compare with the
description I have given: for example, the dressing of the corpse and the
placing of the coin in the mouth as `ferry-money to pay for the passage
of the mystic river', the conspicuous and indispensable participation of
the monks, who preach the essential truths of the inevitability of death
and the impermanence of the body and whose `presence . . . [is] invaluable
in keeping away evil spirits' (Yoe); the monks' role in the funeral procession,
and their purification of the house afterwards; and the feasting as an
act of merit-making. Contemporary villagers in Nondwin in the Mandalay
region, as described by Nash, bury their dead; Shway Yoe, however,
reports that traditionally in Burma, and in the non-British territories of
his time, it was customary (except among the very poor), especially in the
case of the aged, to cremate and to conduct double obsequies (bone collection
and burial of bones after cremation) analogous to the sequence

practised in Baan Phraan Muan today. Both Nash and Yoe report the
different ceremonials related to natural/unnatural deaths.

It is clear that two themes are emphasized in the Burmese mortuary
rites. First, the `soul of the dead', malevolent and sensuously attached to
this world, must be safely conducted to the next form of existence.

The second theme is that available kin, friends and villagers should
collectively engage in the rites, and in helping to transport the dead
themselves earn merit as well as transfer merit to the dead.

These features and the contextual setting of death in Thailand and
Burma raise a comparative issue in respect of the Hindu notions of death,
as portrayed for instance by the Coorgs (Srinivas 1952), Malwa villagers
(Mayer 1960), Havik Brahmins (Harper 1964), and Kallar (Dumont 1957)
or as reported in other general literature (Stevenson 1954). In the Hindu
case various categories of kin are obliged to undergo obligatory mourning
interdictions; secondly, formalized notions of death pollution attach
differentially to these categories of persons and are expressed in behaviour
such as social isolation, systematic purification baths, inability to enter
the temple, to cook food, etc., during the specified period of mourning.

No such customs attach to death in Phraan Muan village. Although
death is inauspicious and the person (and spirit) of the dead man is
dangerous and malevolent, still no pollution from the dead man attaches
to his kin, nor for that matter are such notions linguistically present.
Correspondingly, no formalized mourning behaviour is imposed on the
kin.

Let me elaborate this point. While there is no doubt that death itself
is an inauspicious event and that the corpse has malevolent properties, it
is not because of the dead flesh and bones but because the spirit (winjan)
of the dead hovers dangerously. This spirit may attack the closely related
living kinsmen because of its previous attachment to kin, property, and
house. This feared malevolence—which from another point of view states
that the attachments of the dead must be severed—is expressed in various
acts and beliefs: as in Burma so in Thailand, anyone who dies outside
the community or village cannot be brought into the village and his
previous home in the form of a corpse; ritual reversals like inverting the
ladder and upturning the pots, the requirement that the funeral procession

not enter or go through the village but skirt it, the funeral wake to keep
the spirits at bay, and the chanting of the monks to purify the house—all
these highlight the idea that death and the corpse are dangerous.

But in contrast to Hinduism in India, no pollution as such attaches
to the kin, or to the mourners. On the contrary, we have seen that a strong
ideological orientation, which gives impetus to community-wide solicitude
in the death rites of a member household, is the idea that it is an act of
merit to participate. A son or grandson is positively enjoined to become
a temporary novice or monk so that the merit accruing may be transferred
to the deceased. An aspect of behaviour which throws light on how
villagers face death is the conspicuous absence of mourning, whether in
the form of felt or ritualized wailing or other behaviour connoting loss.
The point at issue is not that the bereaved do not shed tears but that the
rites do not emphasize or accent lamentation. It is interesting that Nash
reports for his Burmese village that only women and girls are permitted
to wail, and then only in a controlled manner without the tearing of
hair, gnashing of teeth, and extravagant display of grief seen in Mexico,
Guatemala, and (I may add) Ceylon and India. That this represents a
cultivated and recommended Buddhist attitude to death is lent credibility
by the observation of Evans-Wentz in The Tibetan Book of the Dead:
`it was stipulated that at the time of reading the Bardo Thodol to the
corpse no relatives should weep or make mournful wailings near the
dead nor in any other way disturb the process of separating the spirit
from its earthly counterpart, but rather the family is enjoined to perform
virtuous deeds of merit' (Evans-Wentz 1960, p. 195).

One cannot help but remark on the similarity of conception between
the verbally elaborated and conceptualized passage from death to rebirth
(or liberation for extraordinary individuals) represented in the Tibetan
Book and the village mortuary rites which effect the transition through
ritual acts.