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The funeral pyre of Chan Kusalo (the Buddhist high monk of Northern Thailand) at Wat Chedi Luang, Chiang Mai, Thailand The tiered funeral pyre of Burmese Buddhist Monk at Pa-Auk Village, Mon State. Traditionally, pyres are used for the cremation of the dead in the Hindu and Sikh religions, a practice which dates back several thousands of years. [3]
Aquatint from the early 19th century purporting to show ritual preparation for the immolation of a Hindu widow—shown in a white sari near the water—on the funeral pyre of her deceased husband. An etching from the early 19th century purporting to show a Hindu widow being led—past the body of her deceased husband—to the funeral pyre.
Open air funeral pyres were made illegal in Britain by the 1930 issue of the Cremation Act. Prior to this but after the 1902 Act, open air cremations had occurred in limited numbers, including several Hindu and Sikh soldiers cremated in Brighton, having died after fighting for the British Empire in World War I .
From amputating fingertips to making a stew of the deceased’s ashes, here are 16 fascinating funeral traditions from around the world.
A Hindu cremation rite in Nepal.The samskara above shows the body wrapped in saffron cloth on a pyre. The Antyesti rite of passage is structured around the premise in ancient literature of Hinduism that the microcosm of all living beings is a reflection of a macrocosm of the universe. [10]
Sati refers to a funeral practice among some communities of Indian subcontinent in which a recently widowed woman immolates herself on her husband's funeral pyre. The first reliable evidence for the practice of sati appears from the time of the Gupta Empire (400 AD), when instances of sati began to be marked by inscribed memorial stones. [153]
John Bodel calculates an annual death rate of 30,000 among a population of about 750,000 in the city of Rome, not counting victims of plague and pandemic. [10] At birth, Romans of all classes had an approximate life expectancy of 20–30 years: men and women of citizen class who reached maturity could expect to live until their late 50's or much longer, barring illness, disease and accident. [11]
In both wars, context made it tricky to deal with moral challenges. What is moral in combat can at once be immoral in peacetime society. Shooting a child-warrior, for instance. In combat, eliminating an armed threat carries a high moral value of protecting your men. Back home, killing a child is grotesquely wrong.