Funeral
A funeral is a ceremony connected with the final disposition of a corpse, such as a burial, entombment or cremation with the attendant observances. Funerary customs comprise the complex of beliefs and practices used by a culture to remember and respect the dead, from interment, to various monuments, prayers, and rituals undertaken in their honour. Customs vary between cultures and religious groups. Funerals have both normative and legal components. Common secular motivations for funerals include mourning the deceased, celebrating their life, and offering support and sympathy to the bereaved; additionally, funerals may have religious aspects that are intended to help the soul of the deceased reach the afterlife, resurrection or reincarnation.
The funeral usually includes a ritual through which the corpse receives a final disposition. Depending on culture and religion, these can involve either the destruction of the body or its preservation. Differing beliefs about cleanliness and the relationship between body and soul are reflected in funerary practices. A memorial service is a funerary ceremony that is performed without the remains of the deceased person. In both a closed casket funeral and a memorial service, photos of the deceased representing stages of life would be displayed on an altar. Relatives or friends would give out eulogies in both services as well.
Etymology
The word funeral comes from the Latin funus, which had a variety of meanings, including the corpse and the funerary rites themselves. Funerary art is art produced in connection with burials, including many kinds of tombs, and objects specially made for burial like flowers with a corpse.Overview
Funeral rites pre-date modern Homo sapiens and dated to at least 300,000 years ago. For example, in the Shanidar Cave in Iraq, in Pontnewydd Cave in Wales and at other sites across Europe and the Near East, Archaeologists have discovered Neanderthal skeletons with a characteristic layer of flower pollen. This deliberate burial and reverence given to the dead has been interpreted as suggesting that Neanderthals had religious beliefs, although the evidence is not unequivocal – while the dead were apparently buried deliberately, burrowing rodents could have introduced the flowers.Substantial cross-cultural and historical research document funeral customs as a highly predictable, stable force in communities. Funeral customs tend to be characterized by five "anchors": significant symbols, gathered community, ritual action, cultural heritage, and transition of the dead body.
Locations
The most common venues for funeral services would be in a place of worship or a funeral home. However, a cemetery's chapel features a reflecting serene intimacy as well as a respectful environment for clergy, mourning families and friends. Graveside services are a less common option for these rituals. A mausoleum's chapel mostly intends to be for entombment after the funeral itself. These two funerary chapels both generously accomodate open or closed-casket services prior to a traditional burial within the cemetery. If a funeral is subsequently followed by cremation, the service would be in a crematorium.Religious funerals
Bahá'í Faith
In the Baháʼí Faith, burial law prescribes both the location of burial and burial practices and precludes cremation of the dead. It is forbidden to carry the body for more than one hour's journey from the place of death. Before interment the body should be wrapped in a shroud of silk or cotton, and a ring should be placed on its finger bearing the inscription "I came forth from God, and return unto Him, detached from all save Him, holding fast to His Name, the Merciful, the Compassionate". The coffin should be of crystal, stone or hard fine wood. Also, before interment, a specific Prayer for the Dead is ordained. The body should be placed with the feet facing the Qiblih. The formal prayer and the ring are meant to be used for those who have reached 15 years of age. Since there are no Bahá'í clergy, services are usually conducted under the guidance, or with the assistance of, a Local Spiritual Assembly.Buddhist
A Buddhist funeral marks the transition from one life to the next for the deceased. It also reminds the living of their own mortality. Cremation is the preferred choice, although burial is also allowed. Buddhists in Tibet perform sky burials where the body is exposed to be eaten by vultures. The body is dissected with a blade on the mountain top before the exposure. Crying and wailing is discouraged and the laugh as if they are doing farm work. Tibetan Buddhists believe that a lighthearted atmosphere during the funeral helps the soul of the dead to get a better afterlife. After the vultures consume all the flesh the smash the bones into pieces and mix them with tsampa to feed to the vultures.Christian
Congregations of varied denominations perform different funeral ceremonies, but most involve offering prayers, scripture reading from the Bible, a sermon, homily, or eulogy, and music. One issue of concern as the 21st century began was with the use of secular music at Christian funerals, a custom generally forbidden by the Catholic Church.Christian burials have traditionally occurred on consecrated ground such as in churchyards. There are many funeral norms in Christianity. Burial, rather than a destructive process such as cremation, was the traditional practice amongst Christians, because of the belief in the resurrection of the body. Cremations later came into widespread use, although some denominations forbid them. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops said "The Church earnestly recommends that the pious custom of burying the bodies of the deceased be observed; nevertheless, the Church does not prohibit cremation unless it was chosen for reasons contrary to Christian doctrine".
Hindu
, literally 'last rites' or 'last sacrifice', refers to the rite-of-passage rituals associated with a funeral in Hinduism. It is sometimes referred to as, or.A dead adult Hindu is cremated, while a dead child is typically buried. The rite of passage is said to be performed in harmony with the sacred premise that the microcosm of all living beings is a reflection of a macrocosm of the universe. The soul is believed to be the immortal essence that is released at the ritual, but both the body and the universe are vehicles and transitory in various schools of Hinduism. They consist of five elements: air, water, fire, earth and space. The last rite of passage returns the body to the five elements and origins. The roots of this belief are found in the Vedas, for example in the hymns of Rigveda in section 10.16, as follows:
The final rites of a burial, in case of untimely death of a child, is rooted in Rigveda's section 10.18, where the hymns mourn the death of the child, praying to deity Mrityu to "neither harm our girls nor our boys", and pleads the earth to cover, protect the deceased child as a soft wool.
Among Hindus, the dead body is usually cremated within a day of death. In Hindu tradition, the body is usually kept at home with the family until its time for cremation. A typical Hindu funeral includes three main stages: a gathering or wake in the home, the cremation itself—referred to as mukhagni—and a follow-up ritual called the shraddha ceremony. The body is washed, wrapped in white cloth for a man or a widow, red for a married woman, the two toes tied together with a string, a placed on the forehead. The dead adult's body is carried to the cremation ground near a river or water, by family and friends, and placed on a pyre with feet facing south. The eldest son, or a male mourner, or a priest then bathes before leading the cremation ceremonial function. He circumambulates the dry wood pyre with the body, says a eulogy or recites a hymn in some cases, places sesame seed in the dead person's mouth, sprinkles the body and the pyre with ghee, then draws three lines signifying , and the dead. The pyre is then set ablaze, while the mourners mourn. The ash from the cremation is consecrated to the nearest river or sea. After the cremation, a period of mourning is observed for 10 to 12 days after which the immediate male relatives or the sons of the deceased shave their head, trim their nails, recites prayers with the help of priest or Brahmin and invite all relatives, kins, friends and neighbours to eat a simple meal together in remembrance of the deceased.
During the mourning period, sleeping arrangements in the home change too. Mattresses are taken off the beds and placed on the floor, and for twelve days, everyone in the household sleeps on the floor as part of the funeral customs. This day, in some communities, also marks a day when the poor and needy are offered food in memory of the dead. In most Hindu communities the last day of the mourning is called as Terahveen, and on this day items of basic needs along with some favourite items of the deceased are donated to the priests. Also on the same day the eldest son of the family is ceremonially crowned for he is now the head of the family. A feast is also organised for Brahmins, family members, and friends.
Zoroastrianism
The belief that bodies are infested by Nasu upon death greatly influenced Zoroastrian burial ceremonies and funeral rites. Burial and cremation of corpses was prohibited, as such acts would defile the sacred creations of earth and fire respectively. Burial of corpses was so looked down upon that the exhumation of "buried corpses was regarded as meritorious." For these reasons, "Towers of Silence" were developed—open air, amphitheater like structures in which corpses were placed so carrion-eating birds could feed on them.Sagdīd, meaning 'seen by a dog,' is a ritual that must be performed as promptly after death as possible. The dog is able to calculate the degree of evil within the corpse, and entraps the contamination so it may not spread further, expelling Nasu from the body. Nasu remains within the corpse until it has been seen by a dog, or until it has been consumed by a dog or a carrion-eating bird. According to chapter 31 of the Denkard, the reasoning for the required consumption of corpses is that the evil influences of Nasu are contained within the corpse until, upon being digested, the body is changed from the form of nasa into nourishment for animals. The corpse is thereby delivered over to the animals, changing from the state of corrupted nasa to that of hixr, which is "dry dead matter," considered to be less polluting.
A path through which a funeral procession has traveled must not be passed again, as Nasu haunts the area thereafter, until the proper rites of banishment are performed. Nasu is expelled from the area only after "a yellow dog with four eyes, or a white dog with yellow ears" is walked through the path three times. If the dog goes unwillingly down the path, it must be walked back and forth up to nine times to ensure that Nasu has been driven off.
Zoroastrian ritual exposure of the dead is first known of from the writings of the mid-5th century BCE Herodotus, who observed the custom amongst Iranian expatriates in Asia Minor. In Herodotus' account, the rites are said to have been "secret", but were first performed after the body had been dragged around by a bird or dog. The corpse was then embalmed with wax and laid in a trench.
While the discovery of ossuaries in both eastern and western Iran dating to the 5th and 4th centuries BCE indicates that bones were isolated, that this separation occurred through ritual exposure cannot be assumed: burial mounds, where the bodies were wrapped in wax, have also been discovered. The tombs of the Achaemenid emperors at Naqsh-e Rustam and Pasargadae likewise suggest non-exposure, at least until the bones could be collected. According to legend, Zoroaster is himself interred in a tomb at Balkh.
Writing on the culture of the Persians, Herodotus reports on the Persian burial customs performed by the Magi, which are kept secret. However, he writes that he knows they expose the body of male dead to dogs and birds of prey, then they cover the corpse in wax, and then it is buried. The Achaemenid custom is recorded for the dead in the regions of Bactria, Sogdia, and Hyrcania, but not in Western Iran.
The Byzantine historian Agathias has described the burial of the Sasanian general Mihr-Mihroe: "the attendants of Mermeroes took up his body and removed it to a place outside the city and laid it there as it was, alone and uncovered according to their traditional custom, as refuse for dogs and horrible carrion".
Towers are a much later invention and are first documented in the early 9th century CE. The ritual customs surrounding that practice appear to date to the Sassanid era. They are known in detail from the supplement to the Shāyest nē Shāyest, the two Revayats collections, and the two Saddars.