İnanç Dosyası 11 | Hinduism 6

Nepal- In front of the Pasupatinath Temple, preparations for cremation. Pasupatinath is a sacred temple in Nepal.  It is like a small Varanasi, with Shiva temples and a sacred river.
(Photo- Melike Mermercioğlu)

India – Varanasi .Anyone who dies in Varanasi, on the banks of the holy River Ganga, attains instant enlightenment. In among the ghats,at dawn, smoke rising from the cremation grounds signals the final release of soul.

Cremation was widely carried out in the ancient world. The Etruscans, the Greeks and the Romans practised it. However, cremation was not practised in ancient Egypt, where the view was that immortality depended on the preservation of the body; or in China, where veneration for dead ancestors was combined with the desire to be buried in the soil of one’s country; or in Israel because of the belief in the resurrection of the body. In Europe cremation ceased to be common with Christianity that attached considerable importance to the resurrection of the physical body. The Indians and the Japanese have always been cremationists. In modern times, the increasing acceptance of the idea of cremation is observable in many parts of the world.  In the United States, in Britain, in Australia and New Zealand, in the Scandinavian countries, and in some other European countries there are crematoria in operation.  The details of the procedure are regulated by sanitary requirements. Explanations of the origins of cremation are speculative: to prevent magic being performed with the corpse; to prevent “walking”, or to liberate the spirit and speed it upward (India).  It is the usual method of disposal among Hindus and frequent among Buddhists. 

In Buddhism death is not an end but a new beginning. For the enlightened man death is no longer the passing to another existence but a release from existence: Nirvana. The details of the procedure are generally regulated by tradition.  In Hinduism there are many variations in points of detail, some local, others due to the caste of the deceased, the sect to which he belonged. Some schools command a second cremation after pulverizing the bones. The cremation fire allows the spirit of the dead to move on freely to a new birth. To orthodox Hindus the cremation ground is a place of pollution. For some, the cremation ground is considered a place of meditation.  The ancient ritual suicide of a wife on her husband’s funeral pyre, a means of acquiring merit and purification, bears the name Sati or Suttee after the goddess, wife of Shiva, who is regarded as the ideal wife.  A body must be burnt before sunset on the day a person dies.  The eldest son lights the funeral pyre. To ensure a happy rebirth every Hindu desires a son. To die in Varanasi and to be cremated there, with ashes scattered on the Ganges, leads to Shiva and is the best death for a Hindu. 

The deceased is a woman and her daughter is sitting and crying next to her.