Death, Burial and Afterlife

 



The cremation towers are carried toward the final destination in the cremation ground

 

Before describing Death, Burial and Afterlife in Indonesia, it is necessary to provide the background of the influences of foreign religious aspects into the archipelago. Before the penetration of Hinduism and Buddhism to the archipelago (Indonesia), it is believed that the ancient Indonesian had held their own belief and traditions. They believed in the spirits of their ancestors and animistic spirits where the large trees, rocks were also having spirits both benevolent and malevolent depending on how they treat them. Both Hinduism and Buddhism introduced a new tradition to the archipelago in the beginning of the millennium of the Common Era which coined amalgamation unique culture and traditions. The first written evidence of the Indian influence was found the Kutai areas in East Kalimantan. There were seven Vedic sacrificial posts with the Pallava scripts and Sanskrit language found the Kutai area which dated around 450^th CE. 

The Hindu’s influence continued to spread to the other islands in the archipelago wherein half a century later in 500^th CE, there were some inscriptions found in the West Java area which depicted the king of the Tarumanagara kingdom was like the Hindu God who protected the world. This western Javanese kingdom seemed did not last for too long, because in 7^th century CE, the Central Javanese kingdoms emerged under two different dynasties; the Sanjaya dynasty of Hindu faith and the Sailendra dynasty of the Buddhist faith. It was not Java that held the great honor to be the center of Buddhism, but Sumatra where the Buddhism has flourished in 7^th century CE. However, there is no great archeological remain being found in Sumatra to mark the ancient glory. It was in Central Java where the great monument of Borobudur, the largest Buddhist monument in the Southeast Asia was a heritage of the Buddhist king of the Sailendra dynasty. The Borobudur temple is one of the seven wanders of the world. In addition to the great Buddhist monument of Borobudur, there is also a heritage of the past glory of the Hindu kingdom where the kings have founded the Prambanan temple complex. Both Hinduism and Buddhism were practiced side by side by the Javanese kings and queens. The glory of Hinduism and Buddhism continued to be the primary faith during the Majapahit kingdom, the most powerful kingdom in the archipelago during 12^th CE to the mid of 16^th century CE. The gradual penetration of Islam into the archipelago has brought the end of the Hindu kingdom in Java where nowadays about 88% of the Indonesian populations hold Muslim faith. However, there are still some populations of mountainous parts of Java embrace Hindu faith. While in Bali, one of thousand islands in Indonesia, the majority of its populations is practicing Hindu religion and still maintains the caste system even though they are not the same as the Indian systems which are very rigid and strict.  

Candi Prambanan, the Hindu Temple complex in central Java

 

Candi Borobudur, the largest Buddhist monument in Asia

Since the Indonesian government recognized only five official religions, therefore the Indonesian populations have to claim one official religion. In general, the populations of the western parts of Indonesia in present day are mostly practicing Islamic faith, whereas in the eastern parts are practicing unique Christian belief that is almost unknown anywhere else. The government policy in recognizing only five religions has created a very unique phenomena throughout the archipelago for better or worse. Those who were compulsory to hold one official religion and at the same time but still feel compulsory to continue their ancient traditions then they have to combine the two faiths into one tradition which gave birth to a new distinctive religion to their locality. To make it easier to look at the unique amalgamation of the new and old faith in the archipelago, the following classification will help to simplify the complexity of the Death, Burial and the Afterlife in the archipelago.

1. The Islamic tradition of treating the dead of the loved ones
2. The amalgamation between the ancestor and animistic beliefs with the Christianity in eastern part of Indonesia. This will include the tradition of the Dayak tribe in Kalimantan, the tradition of Tana Toraja in Sulawesi and tradition of Marapu in Sumba.
3. The Hindu and Buddhist way of treating the Death, Burial and Afterlife in Bali 

Death, Burial and the Afterlife of the Islamic faith

As it has been known that the majority about 88% of the Indonesian populations are practicing Islamic religion. Indonesia is the biggest Islamic country in the world. The Islamic way of treating death is not very complicated compares to the other religion like Hindu or Christian of the animistic and ancestors worship. When a Muslim died, first the family members of the death report to the imam, the religious leader, and then they will tell the relatives. While waiting for the relatives to come for the funeral, it is a tradition to recite the Al Qu’ran in the mourning house both by the imam and by the relatives. It is Islamic way all over the world to bury the corpse as quickly as possible before the sun down. For normal death, the body is washed and then wrapped in a clean, white shroud. In Javanese tradition the ears, the nose, the mouth of the dead is covered with cotton before being wrapped. Before the sun sets the body should be ready to be buried in the graveyard with the face facing Mecca the holiest place of Islam, where Muhammad the Prophet was believed to be born. After burial, in Javanese tradition the family members will carry out memorial rites to the death of the loved one which is called Selametan after 7 days, 40 days, 100 days and 1000 days of the death.

The after-life of the powerful spiritual people is considered magically powerful.  Since the Islamic religion brought into Indonesia by nine wali known as Wali Songo, therefore, their tombs which are located in different areas of Java considered to be holy and spiritually powerful. These tombs are visited by Javanese on certain days for gaining wangsit (magical whisper) from the spirit of the death. It is a common practice in Java that the Indonesian former presidents like Soeharto, Gus Dur (Abdurrahman Wahid), Megawati Sukarnoputri paid homage to the tombs of their ancestors or to the tomb of holy man.

Death, Burial and the Afterlife of the Christian-animistic ancestors’ worship

The combination of Christian missionary and the Indonesian government has created a new phenomenon to the tribes of Eastern Indonesia. The Indonesian government issued a policy for all Indonesian to claim one official recognized religion. Therefore everybody Indonesia has to hold a new religion although they have had their own belief. For example: before the Christianity penetrated the Torajan people in Sulawesi, people already held their own tradition in treating the death. The Torajan live in the mountain areas in the southern central Sulawesi. Most of them claim that they are practicing Christianity at least in their identity card (KTP). In practice they still continue their traditional religion which believes in the spirits of the ancestors, especially in the rural areas. According to their belief the ancestors can be benign or malign depending on how the living relatives treat their corpse and how they died. The souls of those who had martyr death like accidents, suicide or in childbirth need a special treatment otherwise their souls will become harmful spirits to the living ones. The Torajan people carry out life cycle rites but the most important of all is the funeral. When a person died, the relatives did not bury them right away, but they place the body in a special place in the house. The corpse will be injected with formalin and put it in a wooden coffin. In the past, the body would be laid on the mat in a special room with bamboo pipes under the floor to divert the fluid. While waiting for the corpse to decay the family save some money to buy buffalos and pigs. It costs a lot of money, needs many buffalos, pigs and a lengthy preparation to perform proper funeral rites. For that reason people perform a mass funeral rite together in a big group to reduce the burden of the extravagant expenses. The Torajan people perceive the death as the gradual process rather than an abrupt event. They consider the dead as a sleeping person, sick person, as the one who becomes one of the gods and the last stage after the funeral then they consider them dead. After the funeral rites the body or the skeletons will be buried in the cave or high up inside the wooden coffin and then inserted into the hewn cliff. They bury the body depending on the status of the person, the higher the status the higher the place for burial. But the babies who died before having teeth will be buried or inserted into the trunk of a big living tree. They believe that the babies grow with the tree, since they did not have a chance to grow in this mortal world. The trunk of the tree becomes fat and the first burial gets higher and higher following the growth of the tree. There is no effigy needed for the babies. The wooden effigy resembling their deceased family called tau tau is made after the funeral rite and they place the effigies in front of the hewn cave whose spirits will watch over the living ones.

Other Christianized ancestors worship tribes are the Dayak people of Kalimantan or Borneo and the Sumba people one of the lesser Sunda islands. In the past they both had a head-hunting tradition as one of the completion for the death ritual. Because it seems inhuman to sacrifice the head of a living person, the Indonesian government put that practice into a total halt. Only recently, when there was tribe clashed between the immigrant of Islamic Maduranese and the original tribe Christian Dayak people, that long abandoned head-hunting practices emerged to the surface where one of the Maduraneses had his head chopped off for the death ritual. That event has been a long-lasting conflict between Islamic faith and Christianity. In Sumba island located near the place of komodo dragon, for example, people perpetuate the benign power of their ancestor in the form of marapu which can be visualized as the drawing pattern of the sarong textile or in the form of sacred rock placed in their compound. The word marapu refers to both the compound and the spirit of the dead.

The Hindu and Buddhist way of treating the Death, Burial and Afterlife in Bali

Before Hindu-Buddhism influenced the island of Bali, based on the archeological remains Balinese society have had their own way of treating the dead depending on the social status and rank of the deceased. There are many sarcophagi being found in the port cities of western and northern Bali where it is believed to be the traffic of trading between the hinterlands Balinese with the foreign merchants from India and China. Inside the sarcophagi there were some valuable objects being found as the remark of higher social rank and status. In addition to the sarcophagi burial there are also common burial for common people, but the most interesting burial which is still practiced by the origin of Balinese, the pre-Hindu-Buddhist Balinese society is the exposed burial. The indigenous Balinese where now live separated by mountain ranges across the largest lake of a volcanic mountain of Batur of central Bali do not bury their dead but simply put it under the fragrant tree called Taru Menyan from where they got the name of their village Terunyan. After the corpse decomposed then the skeletons are collected and store them in a cave near the cemetery under the tree.

However, the Balinese society who is influenced by the customs of Hinduism from India through Java follows distinct way to treat the dead from the origin Balinese. They perform cremation known as Ngaben, a very elaborate ritual which cost a lot of money, food, pigs and lengthy preparation. Since performing the ngaben rite cost so much money, there is a temporary burial can be done until the living relatives saved some money to perform a ngaben ceremony. The funerary rite is very fundamental in Balinese society, they believe that those un-cremated souls or the souls who do not receive a proper funerary rite will wander around in the mortal world to afflict disaster not only to the living relatives but also to the whole village people. The Balinese respect their deceased relative elaborately. The Balinese believe that only through the ngaben rite this dead mortal body can be returned to their five original elements that compose each body of the living beings. Those elements are called panca mahabhuta consist of earth, water, fire/light, wind/air, ether or body, blood, sight, breath and head respectively.

Not all people in Bali can afford the ngaben right away after the death, therefore there is also burial ceremony. The burial ceremony must be conducted in proper way, must be on the right day according to the Balinese calendar. If we do not follow the rule to bury the dead just any day, there will be disaster haunt the whole village. If someone dies in a community, the wooden bell will be hit three times to announce the death to community. Then they gather together in the mourning house of the death discuss the next step whether the body will be cremated or buried. The elder of the village who have knowledge of astronomy will pick the day to carry out the ceremony. But the most important thing to be done while someone dies is to apply sandalwood water to the whole body of the dead and put it in the ceremonial room covered with long white cloth hanging to the floor to show that the body has died. The body must be washed properly by the graveyard priest or the Saiva priest from the Brahmin caste. During the bathing, the family members will participate to pay respect and love to their beloved one. The hair must be washed and their genital must be covered with black cloth. After every part of the body considered clean, then the priest will put mirror in two eyes, jasmine buds in the nostrils, steels in the teeth, cotton in the ears. The priest then sprinkle sanctified water to the body while citing mantra. Only after that the dead will be put back in the ceremonial room if it is cremated, but if it is decided to be buried the body will be carried to the cemetery after being washed. The gamelan orchestra will accompany any Balinese ritual including taking the death to their final destination. The pall bearers who are the members of the community will make turn three times in each cross road to the way to the graveyard in order that the soul get lost and do not return to his/her living world. A few days after the burial the family members will bring offering in the form of foods, drinks to the graveyard. This burial rite is considered incomplete until there is a ngaben ceremony performed years later when the family have enough money to do so.

In addition to burial and cremation, there is also exposed cemetery where people just lie the body in an open area to let the body decomposed by nature gradually. The body will stay there till it becomes skeleton, then the skeletons will be collected in a cave.

Exposed burial in Trunyan village accross the lake Batur