Death Rituals and Life Values

Death is the last in a long line of LIFE STAGE rituals. As such, this CONTINUITY is emphasized in many death rituals.

• since the continuity of the living and the generations which precede and follow each other is tangible, it is often the focus of death rituals
• This is often expressed in the symbols of SEXUALITY an FERTILITY

Example: Madagascar and the diverse Malagasy people.

• Merina (dominant)
• Sakalava (western)-only royalty receive this treatment/not commoners
• Bara (focus of chapter)

Malagasy Tomb/Family Gathering for REBURIAL (Merina)

REMOVAL OF THE CORPSES (Merina)

"SEXUALLY" CHARGED CELEBRATIONS OF WOMEN -out side the house of tears (men watch)(Bara)

Dancing and singing with the corpses in new shrouds (Merina)

Procession back to tombs (Merina)

Holding of disinterred corpses in burial mats (Merina)

celebration of corpses (Merina)

celebration of corpses (Merina)

disinterment of important ancestor (Sakalava)

Dressing up of important ancestor for community celebration (Sakalava)

decorated ancestors (Sakalava)

MERINO PEOPLE : FAMADIHANA (semi-annual reburial of family remains)

*secondary burial functions to give expression to social and political values of the living.

--Burial is a very important practice among all ethnic groups is Madagascar, where the care given to elaborate tombs far exceeds most homes and many lead a marginal economic existence. Tombs are never neglected by kin groups or communities. 

--during the cool season one sees "burial migrants"along all the roads, traveling to family exhumation events

--taxicabs have listed as one of their fees "exhumation fares-negotiable"

SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXT OF FUNERALS

• death rituals (reburials) are as normal and pervasive as Christmas or July 4th celebrations.
• great expense to individual families and impetus to the economy
• closely associated with POSITIVE FAMILIAL, SOCIAL and POLITICAL STRUCTURES
• not abnormal, morbid or indecent (as in Western societies)
• EMPHASIS ON LIFE AND VITALITY: funeral customs pertain to the ancestral order that is at the heart of normative social systems-ancestor are important in that they encourage virility and fertility. (Unlike in our culture where themes of sex and death lie outside of the public values pertaining to family and community)

Hertz and Van Gennep: Limitations in Analysis

• even though secondary burials are central and elaborate, the Malagasy fail to have a strong sense of the afterworld nor does it provide a motivation for elaborate burial rituals like in Indonesia. 
• Ancestors are believed to LIVE IN the TOMBS
• There is no real "transition" to the world of the dead
• Most striking aspect: bawdy and drunken revelry shared  by guests at reburials
• he or she is isolated and needs to be amused and entertained
• not principally about "transition"
• why? drunkenness, sexual liaisons, bawdy songs? (explanations are away from ghosts and the hereafter and within the basic values of the nature and meaning of life).

CASE STUDY: The Bara 

(interplay between expression of emotion, ritual action, spiritual beliefs, rites of passage schema, and the pinnacle of rebirth-How the Bara squarely face the fact of death)

• Life Values: Order and Vitality
• life is what is TRANSITORY, dying is unambiguous
• life is maintained by a tenuously balanced combination of ORDER and VITALITY
• fertile blood in the womb is ordered and arranged by the sperm during sexual intercourse
• balance between mother's and father's families must likewise be maintained to be socially and economically successful
• life is a journey from MOTHER'S WOMB to FATHER'S TOMB
• Death is an EXCESS of ORDER, upsetting the life-sustaining balance- funeral attempts to redress this imbalance through a symbolic increase in vitality.

ORDER                                          VITALITY

male                                                female

father('s family)                             mother('s family)

semen                                             blood

bone                                                flesh

sterility                                           fecundity

dying                                              birth

tomb                                               womb

*Illustration of the change in nature the accompanies DYING (how death can be seen as a transition in relation to the whole experience of life)

• The corpse in LIMINAL in that it occupies that space of bone and flesh (life) and death
• SEXUAL ASPECTS relate to the mortal consequences of liminality: the dead, sterile order of bone takes over the living, so they must be countered with the most extreme aspects of vitality.

BARA FUNERAL SEQUENCE: three parts for the dead

1. burial: first few days after death
2. gathering: great feast celebrated after the harvest following the death
3. exhumation and reburial: after corpse has completely dried and the flesh has rotted away

Experience for the LIVING:

• death and burial are shocking events that disturb the normal flow of daily life
• gathering is part of the annual season of FESTIVITIES, going from one reburial to another, it is a highly sociable and festive season (but also very serious).

BURIAL

• death signifies the radical separation of the male and female components of a person.
• male and female house are selected and 
• the corpse will reside in the FEMALE HOUSE for 3 days, punctuated by ritual weeping of women in attendance
• sometimes called "the house of many tears"
• MALE house will receive men in an orderly and stylized fashion (formal)
• Men and women are separated by day, but at night the women come into the courtyard to dance, and as the men slowly join in, this evolves into an orgiastic gathering unlike that seen in normal interactions between the sexes
• EXTREMES: also in sound, total silence at the time of death (not even announced)-loud wailing, singing, shouting and gun shooting
• Cattle wresting-
• body in straightened out and laid out and jaw and eyes are closed. After 3 days men come and put it in a coffin, over tearful protests of women
• coffin is covered with a new unfinished cloth, and carry it around the house of tears while unhusked fertile rice is sprinkled behind it. 
• Youths who have had sexual experience run ahead to the burial ground with the coffin chased by young girls and other youth followed by adults, relatives and cattle (whole town). Sexual contest between youths for the corpse.
• Corpse is put in the cave/crypt head first and relatives enter feet first, recluse the tomb and rap it with a green branch. after pouring rum as an offering.

GATHERING

• most elaborate and important aspect of social life
• 100 liters of rum, 10 cattle, conspicuous display of wealth 
• Celebration and danger: Rum is particularly dangerous
• witches can contaminate it
• intoxication: danger of unrestrained vigor: illicit sex, hatchet attack, inappropriate kin relations

REBURIAL

• signals a return to normalcy as the bones are "redressed" with their favorite items and placed in the final caskets male with male and female with female
• no drinking, bawdy songs, wrestling, sex
• deceased spouse is free to remarry

SYMBOLIC GENERATION OF VITALITY

• Dying: involves an imbalance in the components of human life. To combat the male fatal "order" one must counter this with the female "vitality":
• SONGS: playful sexual scenes in the songs from the girls.Dominates the funeral cycle.
• also songs about childbirth dominate the funeralctcle
• ENERGY: faha
• potential stored up vitality/energy
• displays of exuberance are common and the corpse or sleepy or old people are fair game for practical jokes
• DANCE: most evident activity of stored up vitality
• special dance which imitates the winding of a clock and concentric circles
• CATTLE: 
• cattle wresting at the burial and gathering ceremonies (stampede the herd around and around)-snorting, bucking and panting are illustrative of vitality.
• association of cattle with fertility
• provide food for feasting (slaughtered en masse, unlike on other occasions). 
• CHAOS: incest and war
• rum is served not only because intoxication is present, but because disorderly conduct is essential
• tolerance of INCEST (in word and deed) are tolerated and violate the basic principles of moral and social order
• dance troupes possess dangerous antisocial qualities. far too dangerous for them to sing after dark.
• dancers troupes are hired -are dressed as warriors and dance with spears, dancing is wild and sexual and they try to entice money from the audience
• considered low status and outside the social order

RESOLUTION: INTERCOURSE AND REBIRTH

• vitality is generated through various activities and EXCESSES during the funeral celebration in an effort to counterbalance the excessive order of death
• symbolism of the funeral is sexual: 
• corpse captured by boys from girls and run to the burial ground
• enters tomb head-first (birth) -born into the world of the dead
• sexual intercourse and birth are seen as the metaphor of transition for the dead
• survivors must bring about the REBIRTH through secondary burial (assures continued fertility of the living-children, crops, livestock, etc.)