ATDDTA (8) Towers of Silence (209:26)

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

The Tibetian "Sky Burial" ritual also comes to mind. 

          The purpose of this document is to provide an 
          ethnographic account of the Tibetan funeral ritual - 
          the sky burial, (Tib.) 'jhator', literally 'giving alms 
          to the birds.'

At one point two of the attendants unwrapped one of the bodies and calmly began 
to cut it up. At first they sliced of pieced of flesh which they tossed to an 
area about fifteen or twenty feet from where they were working. A couple of huge 
vultures were flying high overhead, and a couple of others were perched on some 
rocks at some distance. Then the men began to wave their arms and made some 
strange haunting sounds that reminded me of wild animal or bird calls. It 
probably took about 15-20 minutes for the birds to come - a few dozen. In the 
meantime the two men charged with the job of disposing of the bodies, continued 
to cut up the bodies, one at-a-time. The bones were hacked or broken into 
smaller pieces and tossed aside. The vultures swooped down and tore off pieces 
of flesh or in some cases flew off with a large chunk which they could eat 
without being challenged. The bigger bones were broken up on the rocks with 
large heavy stone, and the pieces tossed easily into the feeding area. Although 
there seemed to be more than enough for all the birds, by nature they kept vying 
for the spoils. The whole affair was not harried, but rather a methodical solemn 
process that must have lasted for a little more than an hour.

http://www.ciolek.com/WWWVLPages/TibPages/tib-burial.html
 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Keith <keithsz at mac.com>
> While I can find no references to hanging corpses on telegraph poles  
> or placing them atop adobe brick towers (perhaps an allusion to the  
> towered Mormon temples http://tinyurl.com/2ture6 ) in turn-of-the- 
> century Utah, the Persian "Towers of Silence" serve the stated purpose:
> 
> "Zoroastrians consider a dead body - in addition to cut hair and nail- 
> parings - to be nasu, unclean. According to tradition, the purpose of  
> exposure is to preclude the pollution of earth or fire (see Zam and  
> Atar respectively). Corpses are therefore placed atop a tower and so  
> exposed to the sun and to birds of prey. Bodies are arranged in three  
> rings: men around the outside, women in the second circle, and  
> children in the innermost ring. The ritual precinct may only be  
> entered by a special class of pallbearers. Once the bones have been  
> bleached by the sun and wind, which can take as long as a year, they  
> are collected in an ossuary pit at the center of the tower and/or are  
> eventually washed out to sea."
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towers_of_Silence