The 5 Creepiest Death Rituals From Around the World

[Potoooooooo]

http://www.cracked.com/article_16502_5-creepiest-death-rituals-from-around-world.html

[aupmanyav]

Sati (the correct spelling) was once practiced in India, in North to escape indignities by muslims; in Bengal to usurp the widows property. It is very rare now but India is a large country. As for the body left for the scanvenging birds, I see no problem, a good use, by buddhists, zoroastrians, and aboriginals. Starving oneself to death after living a full life among buddhists and jains (Santhara - the ultimate penance), that is a religious matter, a person's choice. Why should everyone die just by disease?

I see no sense in burial by christians and muslims in hope that they would be raised from death.

[Coragyps]

Interesting factoid about that "sky burial:" a widely used veterinary antibiotic kills vultures through kidney damage after they eat carcasses of treated farm animals. The most common species of vulture in northern India is down to maybe 10% of its former population because of this - so funerals by buzzard can hardly be conducted any more.

Some American Indians put their dead on raised platforms for the birds, too.

[Lógos Sokratikós]

It probably isn't from compassion that vultures are fed human corpses, beause likewise they can feed the maggots out of compassion. Sounds like sometime in the forgotten past they thought it was a way to go into some sky deity's abode via airmail.

It's magical thinking, like voodoo dolls. Because even the most primitive human would know everything a bird eats becomes gravity-prone fæces.

[premjan]

Apparently vultures will strip the body faster than other means like maggots. Though I'd guess piranha would be just as quick if not quicker.
"The vultures (nature's scavengers) do their work much more expeditiously than millions of insects would do, if dead bodies were buried in the ground. By this rapid process, putrefaction with all its concomitant evils, is most effectually prevented. According to the Zoroastrian religion, Earth, Fire, and Water are sacred and very useful to mankind, and in order to avoid their pollution by contact with putrefying flesh, the Zoroastrian religion strictly enjoins that the dead bodies should not be buried in the ground, or burnt, or thrown into seas, rivers, etc.http://www.avesta.org/ritual/funeral.htm

[aupmanyav]

I have no complaints about maggots. They too are Brahman. They must have tried piranha disposal too. Fast work, I agree. :)

p.s. - The airmail service is surely available. Only that larger consignments are cut into smaller consignment.

[Potoooooooo]

I have no complaints about maggots. They too are Brahman. They must have tried piranha disposal too. Fast work, I agree. :)



but they are a South American fish:huh:

[aupmanyav]

What I meant was that South American Indians may have tried piranha disposals also.

[figuer]

Feeding the body to vultures seems to me the most civilized of all practices.

Note: There are no South American Indians, there are South American Natives. It is time educated people stop honoring such a mistake.

[aupmanyav]

Thanks, Figuer. I am not such an educated person, my education is quite elemental. :)