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- Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
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Among the collected hymns of the Rigveda (which may date from 1500 bc and probably constitute the earliest known book in the world), there is a “Song of Creation.” “Death was not there,” it states, “nor was there aught immortal.” The world was a total void, except for “one thing, breathless, yet breathed by its own nature.” This is the first recorded insight into the importance of respiration to potential life.
Later, by about 600 bc, the Upaniṣads (a collection of searching, intellectually stimulating Indo-Aryan texts) record the quest for a coordinating principle that might underlie such diverse functions of the individual as speech, hearing, and intellect. An essential attribute of the living was their ability to breathe (an). Their praṇa (“breath”) was so vital that on its cessation the body and its faculties became lifeless and still. The word for “soul,” ātman, is derived from an, thus placing the concept of breath at the very core of the individual self or soul.
The Hindu concept of the soul is central to an understanding of most Hindu practices related to death. The practices that the religion inspires entail acts that appear contradictory. What is unique to Hinduism, however, is that these are not perceived as contradictions. A common thread unites the most abstract philosophical speculations and beliefs in ghosts; a deep respect for nonviolence and the bloodiness of certain sacrificial rites; extreme asceticism and the sexual aspects of Tantric worship. At very different levels of sophistication, these all represent attempts to expand human perception of the truth and to achieve a cosmic consciousness. To the intellectually inclined Hindu, the eternal, infinite, and all-pervasive principle of Brahman alone is real, and the acquisition of cosmic consciousness allows humans to become one with it. The individual soul (ātman) is merely a particle of this cosmic principle, the relationship being likened to that between air, temporarily trapped in an earthen jar, and the endless space without; or to that between a particular wave and the ocean as a whole.
Death practices are probably more important in Hinduism than in any other religion. At one level they derive from explicit religious premises. Each being is predestined to innumerable rebirths (saṃsāra), and one’s aggregate moral balance sheet (karman) determines both the length of each life and the specific form of each rebirth. Moral attributes are minutely quantifiable causal agents: every grain sown in this existence is reaped in the next. The prospect of innumerable lives is therefore envisaged with dismay. To escape the dreaded rebirths is to achieve final emancipation (mokṣa). “Life everlasting” (at least of the type already sampled) is the last thing a Hindu would aspire to. Mokṣa can be achieved only by the saintly, or perhaps by those who have died in Vārānasi and had their ashes strewed on the Ganges River. For others, the wages of worldliness is inevitable reincarnation.
Hindu death practices, however, also reflect popular beliefs and fears, as well as local customs. They thus may vary considerably from region to region or from sect to sect, bearing a rather variable relation to religious doctrine. Many practices are derived from the Dharma-śastra of Manu, the most authoritative of the books of Hindu sacred law. The alleged author of the book is the mythical sage Manu, who combined flood-surviving attributes (like Noah of Jews and Christians, and Utnapishtim of the Mesopotamians) with law-giving propensities (like Moses and Hammurabi). The book, which grew by repeated additions over many centuries, reflects the evolving interests of a male Brahman priesthood: its prescriptions are overwhelmingly recorded in terms of what is appropriate for men. Women are seldom referred to, and then often in derogatory terms.
Death practices
Hindus hold that a span of 120 years has been allotted to human life, a strange notion in a country where the average life expectancy was under 30 into the 20th century. They have no difficulty with the concept of death as a process. Mythological beliefs involving early Vedic gods held that the god reigning over the ears departed early, as did the gods of the eyes, hands, and mind.
When devout Hindus sense death approaching, they begin repeating the monosyllable Om. (This word refers to Brahman and is widely used in religious observance to help concentrate the mind on what matters.) If it is the last word on a person’s lips, it guarantees a direct passage to mokṣa. When the dying are judged to have only an hour or so left, they are moved from their bed to a mattress on the floor and their heads are shaved. The space between ground and the ceiling is thought to symbolize the troubled area between earth and sky, and those dying there may return after death as evil spirits. A space on the ground is sanctified with Ganges water and various other ingredients, including cow dung, barley, and sesame seeds. A Hindu should never die in bed, but lying on the ground. As they take their last breaths, the dying are moved from the mattress to ground. Experienced members of the family are usually present to help decide the opportune moment. Water taken from the confluence of the rivers Ganges and Yamuna (at Allahābād) is poured into the mouth, into which is also placed a leaf of the tulsi plant (Ocimum sanctum). The forehead is smeared with white clay (gopi candana). A woman whose death precedes her husband’s is considered so fortunate that her face, and especially her forehead, may be smeared with red. Sometimes, if there is doubt as to whether death has occurred, a lump of ghee (clarified butter) is placed on the forehead; if it does not melt, it is taken as a sign that life is extinct—an interesting but potentially misleading practice in the light of modern awareness of how hypothermia can mimic death. The dead body is wrapped in clean cloth of varying colours that indicate age. In the home the relatives walk clockwise around the body; they will walk around the funeral pyre in the opposite direction.
The body is looked upon as an offering to Agni, god of fire. According to the Vedas, the Indo-Aryans used to bury their dead. Why the Hindus and Buddhists burn theirs has been the subject of much controversy. It has been variously interpreted as a gesture of purification, as the most efficient means of releasing the soul from the corrupted body, as a public health measure with important ecological benefits in a crowded country, or as a symbol of the transitory nature of any particular life and the desire that it should end in permanent anonymity. Fire taken from the deceased’s home is transported to the cremation ground in a black earthen pot; this is carried immediately in front of the deceased, and nothing must come between them. For many years women were not allowed to follow the cortege, and only the wives of Brahmans could walk around the pyre. At the cremation site, a lighted torch is handed to the eldest son or grandson, who ignites the pyre, near the feet of the dead woman, at the head of the dead man. While the body is burning the soul is thought to seek refuge within the head. The intense heat usually explodes the skull, liberating the soul; when this does not happen spontaneously, the skull is deliberately shattered by blows from a cudgel. Other traditions hold that the soul passes out through the nose, eyes, and mouth. Some believe it is better still if it leaves through the anterior fontanel, an opening in the skull that normally closes during early childhood. Such theorists hold that if the deceased has practiced yoga or intense meditation, this opening will reopen, allowing free passage to the soul. In some parts of India it is believed that the souls of the really wicked depart through the rectum, and in so doing acquire such defilement that endless purification is necessary.
Children under the age of two are not cremated but buried. When dying, they are not placed on the ground; instead they are allowed to expire in their mothers’ arms. There are no special death rites; it is felt the child must have been a monster of iniquity in its previous life to have incurred such a terrible karman. Infant mortality is clearly attributed to the child’s own wickedness and carries a load of 84 lakhs of rebirths (i.e., the child has to be reborn 8,400,000 times). The ceremonial defilement of relatives is short, lasting only three days. Among the very high-caste Nagaras, when a pregnant woman dies the fetus is removed and buried, while the mother is cremated.
Ascetics, too, are buried rather than burnt, usually in an upright posture with the body surrounded with salt. Lepers and smallpox victims used to be buried in a recumbent position. Smallpox has been eradicated, and leprosy victims are usually cremated. If a Hindu “breaks caste” by becoming either a Muslim or a Christian, a death ceremony is conducted, the relatives bathe to purge their defilement, and the person’s name is never mentioned again. The concept of death clearly influences what is deemed appropriate death behaviour, as was argued earlier in this article.
The fate of the soul
What happens between death and reincarnation is seldom discussed in articles about Hinduism. This is regrettable, for the perception of these events helps explain some of the rites of the religion and provides unique insights into the human preference, when thinking about death, to conceptualize metaphysical developments in very concrete terms.
Immediately after death, the soul is not clothed in a physical body but in a vaporous thumb-sized structure (linga ṡarīra). This is immediately seized by two servants of Yama, the god of death, who carry it to their master for a preliminary identity check. Afterward, the soul is promptly returned to the abode of the deceased, where it hovers around the doorstep. It is important that the cremation be completed by the time of the soul’s return, to prevent it from reentering the body. By the 10th day, the near relatives have purged some of the defilement (mṛitaka sutaka) they incurred from the death, and the chief mourner and a priest are ready to carry out the first śrāddha (ritual of respect). This is a step toward the reconstitution of a more substantial physical body (yatana ṡarīra) around the disembodied soul (preta) of the deceased. A tiny trench is dug in a ritually purified piece of land by a river, and the presence of Vishnu is invoked. Ten balls of barley flour mixed with sugar, honey, milk, curds, ghee, and sesame seeds are then placed, one by one, in the soil. As the first ball is offered, the priest says (and the son repeats after him), “May this create a head”; with the second ball, “May this create neck and shoulders”; with the third, “May this create heart and chest”; and so on. The 10th request is for the ball to create the capacity to digest, thereby satisfying the hunger and thirst of the newly created body. Bungled ceremonies can have catastrophic effects. Prayers are offered to Vishnu to help deliver the new entity (now perceived as some 18 inches [46 centimetres] long) into the power of Yama. The balls of barley are picked up from the trench and thrown into the river. Further śrāddhas are performed at prescribed times, varying according to caste; one of these rituals makes the soul an ancestral spirit, or pitṛi. With the completion of these rituals, the soul of the deceased leaves this world for its yearlong and perilous journey to Yama’s kingdom. The family is now formally cleansed. The men shave their heads, and the women wash their hair. The family’s tutelary god (removed by a friend at the time of the death) can be returned to its home. A feast is offered to Brahmans, neighbours, and beggars—even the local cows are given fresh grass. There is a sense of general relief: if the śrāddhas had not been performed, the preta could have become a bhūta (malignant spirit), repeatedly turning up to frighten the living. For the deceased, things would have been worse: the preta would have been left errant. (A similar fate befalls the soul of a person who commits suicide.) The horror of dying unshriven that haunted people in medieval Europe resembles the despair of the devout Hindu at the prospect of having no son to perform the śrāddhas.
The soul, in its substantial envelope, is meanwhile proceeding on its journey, holding onto a cow’s tail to cross the Vaitarani, a horrible river of blood and filth that marks the boundary of Yama’s kingdom. Throughout, it is sustained by further śrāddhas, during which friends on earth seek to provide it with shoes, umbrellas, clothing, and money. These they give to a Brahman, in the hope that the deceased will benefit. During such rituals relatives have to avoid all sewing, which might occlude the pitṛi’s throat, rendering it incapable of ever breathing or drinking again. After a year, the pitṛi in its yatana ṡarīra reaches Yama’s seat of judgment, where it is sentenced to a strictly limited term in heaven (svarga) or hell (naraka) according to its deserts. This completed, it moves into another body (the karaṇa ṡarīra), whose form depends on the individual’s karman. It could be a plant, a cockroach, a canine intestinal parasite, a mouse, or a human being. Unlike Jains, Hindus believe that whatever body the soul eventually moves into, it inhabits as sole tenant, not as a tenement lodger.
Islām
Probably no religion deals in such graphic detail as does Islām with the creation, death, “life in the tomb,” and ultimate fate of humankind. Yet the Qurʿān, the holy book of Islām, itself provides no uniform or systematic approach to these problems. It is only in its later parts (which date from the period when the small Muslim community in Medina had come into contact with other religious influences) that problems such as the relation of sleep to death, the significance of breathing, and the question of when and how the soul leaves the body are addressed in any detail. Popular Muslim beliefs are based on still later traditions. These are recorded in the Kitāb al-rūḥ (“Book of the Soul”) written in the 14th century by the Ḥanbalī theologian Muḥammad ibn Abī-Bakr ibn Qayyīm al-Jawzīyah.
The basic premise of all Qurʿānic teaching concerning death is Allāh’s omnipotence: he creates human beings, determines their life span, and causes them to die. The Qurʿān states: “Some will die early, while others are made to live to a miserable old age, when all that they once knew they shall know no more (22:5; i.e., sūrah [chapter] 22, verse 5). Damnation and salvation are equally predetermined: “Allāh leaves to stray whom he willeth, and guideth whom he willeth” (35:8). As for those whom Allāh leaves astray, the Qurʿān states that “for them there will be no helpers” (30:29). Allāh has decided many will fail: “If We had so willed We could certainly cause proper guidance to come to every soul, but true is My saying ‘assuredly I shall fill Jihannam’ ” (32:13).
In this perspective the individual’s fate (including the mode and time of death) appears inescapably predetermined. The very term Islām, Arabic for “surrender,” implies an absolute submission to the will of God. But what freedom does this allow those predestined to continue in the path of error, or to reject God’s will? And if there is no such freedom, what sense was there in the mission of the Prophet Muḥammad (Islām’s founder) and his appeal to people to alter their ways? It is hardly surprising that arguments about free will and predestination broke out soon after the Prophet’s death. The ensuing tensions dominated theological (and other) controversies within Islām during many centuries.
Questions concerning the meaning of life and the nature of the soul are dealt with patchily in both the Qurʿān and the Ḥadīth (the record of the sayings attributed to the Prophet). The Qurʿān records that, when asked about these matters by local leaders of the Jewish faith, the Prophet answered that “the spirit cometh by command of God” and that “only a little knowledge was communicated to man” (17:85). Humanity was created from “potter’s clay, from mud molded into shape” into which Allāh has “breathed his spirit” (15:28–29). A vital spirit or soul (nafs) is within each human being. It is associated, if not actually identified, with individuality and also with the seat of rational consciousness. It is interesting to speculate on the possible relation of the term nafs to such Arabic words as nafas (“breath”) and nafīs (“precious”), particularly in a language where there are no written vowels.
Death is repeatedly compared with sleep, which is at times described as “the little death.” God takes away people’s souls “during their sleep” and “upon their death.” He “retains those against whom he has decreed death, but returns the others to their bodies for an appointed term” (39:42–43). During death, the soul “rises into the throat” (56:83) before leaving the body. These are interesting passages in the light of modern medical knowledge. The study of sleep has identified the episodic occurrence of short periods during which the limbs are totally flaccid and without reflexes, as would be the limbs of the recently dead. Modern neurophysiology, moreover, stresses the role of structures in the upper part of the brain stem in the maintenance of the waking state. Lesions just a little higher (in the hypothalamus) cause excessively long episodes of sleep. Irreversible damage at these sites is part of the modern concept of death. Finally, various types of breathing disturbance are characteristic of brain-stem lesions and could have been attributed, in former times, to occurrences in the throat. Nothing in these passages outrages the insights of modern neurology. The absence of any cardiological dimension is striking.
It is orthodox Muslim belief that when someone dies the Angel of Death (malāk al-mawt) arrives, sits at the head of the deceased, and addresses each soul according to its known status. According to the Kitāb al-rūh, wicked souls are instructed “to depart to the wrath of God.” Fearing what awaits them, they seek refuge throughout the body and have to be extracted “like the dragging of an iron skewer through moist wool, tearing the veins and sinews.” Angels place the soul in a hair cloth and “the odour from it is like the stench of a decomposing carcass.” A full record is made, and the soul is then returned to the body in the grave. “Good and contented souls” are instructed “to depart to the mercy of God.” They leave the body, “flowing as easily as a drop from a waterskin”; are wrapped by angels in a perfumed shroud, and are taken to the “seventh heaven,” where the record is kept. These souls, too, are then returned to their bodies.
Two angels coloured blue and black, known as Munkar and Nakīr, then question the deceased about basic doctrinal tenets. In a sense this trial at the grave (fitnat al-Qabr) is a show trial, the verdict having already been decided. Believers hear it proclaimed by a herald, and in anticipation of the comforts of al-jannah (the Garden, or “paradise”) their graves expand “as far as the eye can reach.” Unbelievers fail the test. The herald proclaims that they are to be tormented in the grave; a door opens in their tomb to let in heat and smoke from jihannam (“hell”), and the tomb itself contracts “so that their ribs are piled up upon one another.” The period between burial and the final judgment is known as al-barzakh. At the final judgment (yaum al-Hisāb), unbelievers and the god-fearing are alike resurrected. Both are endowed with physical bodies, with which to suffer or enjoy whatever lies in store for them. The justified enter Gardens of Delight, which are described in the Qurʿān in terms of prevalent, but essentially masculine, tastes (37:42–48). At the reception feast on the Day of Judgment unbelievers fill their bellies with bitter fruit, and “drink down upon it hot water, drinking as drinks the camel crazed with thirst” (56:52–55). They then proceed to hell, where they don “garments of fire” (22:19) and have boiling water poured over their heads. Allāh has made provision against the annihilation of the body of the damned, promising that “whenever their skins are cooked to a turn, We shall substitute new skins for them, that they may feel the punishment” (4:56). Pleas for annihilation are disregarded. Although this is sometimes referred to as the “second death,” the Qurʾān is explicit that in this state the damned “neither live nor die” (87:13).
A special fate is reserved for the martyrs of Islām; i.e., for those who fall in a jihād (“holy war”). Their evil deeds are instantly expiated and the formalities of judgment are waived; they enter the Garden immediately. Similar dispensations are promised to “those who had left their homes, or been driven therefrom, or who had suffered harm” in the divine cause (3:195). For the Shīʾites, followers of the smaller of Islām’s two major branches, the prospects for martyrdom are even wider. A major event of the origin of Shīʾism, moreover, was the slaughter of the Prophet’s grandson, Ḥusayn, in 680; this heritage has imbued Shīʾism with a zeal for martyrdom. Some of the behaviour of Islāmic fundamentalists is explicable from this perspective.
A gentler strand in Islāmic eschatology produced, over the centuries, a series of reinterpretations or adaptations of the original doctrine, some of whose tenets were even claimed to have been only metaphorical. These tendencies, which stressed individual responsibility, were often influenced by the Ṣūfīs (Islāmic mystics).
Muslims accord a great respect to dead bodies, which have to be disposed of very promptly. The mere suggestion of cremation, however, is viewed with abhorrence. The philosophical basis, if any, of this attitude is not clear. It is not stated, for instance, that an intact body will be required at the time of resurrection. It is unlikely, moreover, that the abhorrence—which Orthodox Jews share—arose out of a desire to differentiate Islāmic practices from those of other “people of the Book” (i.e., Jews and Christians). The attitude toward dead bodies has had practical consequences; for instance, in relation to medical education. It is almost impossible to carry out postmortem examinations in many Islāmic countries. Medical students in Saudi Arabia, for example, study anatomy on corpses imported from non-Islāmic countries. They learn pathology only from textbooks; many complete their medical training never having seen a real brain destroyed by a real cerebral hemorrhage.
In 1982 organ donation after death was declared ḥallāl (“permissible”) by the Senior ʾUlamāʿ Commission, the highest religious authority on such matters in Saudi Arabia (and hence throughout the Islāmic world). Tales inculcated in childhood continue, however, to influence public attitudes in Islāmic nations. The widely told story of how the Prophet’s uncle Ḥamzah was murdered by the heathen Hind, who then opened the murdered man’s belly and chewed up his liver, has slowed public acceptance of liver transplantation. Kidney transplantation is more acceptable, perhaps because the Ḥadīth explicitly states that those entering the Garden will never more urinate.
