ATDDTA (8) Towers of Silence (209:26)
Joe Allonby
joeallonby at gmail.com
Wed May 2 09:53:46 CDT 2007
On 5/2/07, robinlandseadel at comcast.net <robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> 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
>
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