books of the Hindus: a human body is said to consist of four elements,—earth, water, air, and fire,—and it should be returned to these elements as quickly as possible. Cremation is considered the best method to adopt. Earth-burial, as among Christians also, is the returning of the body to the element Earth; water-burial is the returning of the body to the element Water, air-burial, to the element Air—the birds which devour the corpse being the denizens of the air; and fire-burial, or cremation, the returning of the body to the element Fire.
When air-burial is adopted in Tibet, even the bones of the corpse, after the birds have stripped them of flesh, are disposed of by being hammered to bits in small cavities in the rocks of the funereal hill, then mixed with flour and formed into a dough and given to the birds to devour.[1] The Tibetan air-burial is thus more thorough than that of the Parsees, who allow the bones of their dead to remain in the air and slowly decompose.
In a Tibetan funeral of the ordinary sort, neither a coffin nor any corpse-receptacle is used. The corpse after being laid upon its back on a sheet or piece of cloth spread over a framework, commonly made of a light material like wicker affixed to two poles, is covered with a pure white cloth. Two men, inserting their heads between the projecting ends of the two poles, act as pall-bearers. In Sikkim, however, the corpse is carried thus sitting, in the embryonic posture described above.
Both in Sikkim and in Tibet every funeral is conducted in strict accordance with the directions which have been given by the astrologer who cast the death-horoscope, indicating who shall touch or handle the corpse, who shall carry it, and the form of the burial. The astrologer also declares what kind of evil spirit caused the death, for in popular belief—as also among the Celtic peoples of Europe—no death is natural, but is always owing to interference by one of the innumerable death-demons. The astrologer announces, too, what ceremonies are necessary to exorcize the death-demon
- ↑ The men who perform this part of the burial belong to a special caste, and, being regarded as unclean, are ordinarily shunned by other Tibetans.
