Ways of Dying

Death as the basic condition of life and as the ultimate destiny of all men is also a decisive factor in the shaping of cultures. Death's emergence as rupture and loss, and man’s reaction in the form of grief and mourning are at the core of a vast unfolding of belief systems and ritual practices which aim at dealing with this overwhelming reality coherently. Whether the hereafter, into which death leads, is seen as the radical other that either precludes the possibility of the continuation of an individual existence or the possibility of any epistemological insight, or whether it is rather seen as a continuation of existence, allowing interactions between this and that world, man is inevitably directed towards this horizon that is death. This volume aims at surveying how various cultures (tribal, regional and pan-Indian) of South Asia come to terms with this horizon of dying, death and the dead. It combines the ethnographic point of view that stresses the social and ritual forms related to death, and the conceptual aspects which favour the idea of an agency of texts.