Cremation

Cremation is the process of burning the human corpse until only some bone fragments and ashes remain, material often described in American English by the neologism cremains. Cremation possesses two trajectories within human cultures, one that is long-standing and of ancient origin and the other of modern invention. The former is reflected in archaeological findings from the New Stone Age of some 8,000 years ago in China and 6,000 years ago in Britain as well as in ancient Greece where they pass into Bronze Age and Iron Age practice only to be replaced by burial by about the 5th century B.C.E. Ancient customs of cremation on the Indian subcontinent are still familiar in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sikhism, which retain cremation as their main funerary rite of human disposal. The modern invention of cremation, by contrast, began in the later 19th century in Europe as a result of scientific modernization aimed at social welfare on the one hand and ideological opposition to traditional Christianity on the other. Although this entry focuses on the modern resurgence of cremation, it also sketches aspects of these ancient traditions to stress that cremation serves as a vehicle for a variety of political, economic, and social values as well as specifically ideological or religious beliefs.

Early in the 20th century the French anthropologist Robert Hertz made the important point that cremation itself is seldom a single rite of burning the corpse but often involves a secondary [Page 233]process dealing with the ashes as part of the reorganization of a society after someone's death. The dead person is often given a new identity, perhaps as ancestor, while the living come to terms with their own bereavement. The ashes may be buried, placed in running water, or even ingested.

Ancient Continuities

Underlying the ancient roots of cremation in India is the idea of cremation both as a kind of sacrifice to the gods and as a vehicle by which the lifeforce or spirit is released from the body that it has vitalized during its lifetime. In traditional Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sikhism, that spirit is believed to have a life of its own in the ongoing round of existence or samsara by which it comes to inhabit a series of life forms prior to human birth and after bodily death. The notion of karma controls this ongoing passage of the lifeforce in terms of a scheme of cause and effect grounded in a moral code of right behavior. Life lived according to religious-social laws that are grounded in the human affinity for reciprocity conduces to an accumulation of positive moral power or merit and will lead to a better future existence, whereas a negative valuation has the opposite effect.

This ideology links birth and death and makes sense of cremation as part of a wider processing of the self in India-derived religious schemes, including the sense of cremation as a final gift made to the gods, the last act of devotion in this present existence. The traditional Indian cremation pyre could, therefore, be seen as a form of altar of fire sacrifice. The equally traditional custom of the eldest son cracking the deceased parent's skull during the process of cremation, similarly, sets free the lifeforce for its transmigration prior to future embodiment.

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