Sky burial is a traditional funeral method of Mongolian, Tibetan and other ethnic minorities, after the death of a person to the designated place to be swallowed by eagles (or other birds, beasts, etc.), thinking that it can be taken to heaven. Like burial, water burial, and cremation, it is a kind of belief, a way of expressing mourning for the deceased, and it is essentially a social and cultural phenomenon, from its origin, form, content and the implementation of rituals, it is affected by factors such as the natural geographical environment and the way of life and industry, as well as foreign culture. Therefore, in different historical periods, different countries and regions, different nationalities and even different social classes, different celestial burial ceremonies will be formed.

It is recorded in ancient Chinese books. For example, "the ancient burial of the rich clothes to pay, buried in the wilderness, not sealed and not tree" - "Zhou Yi Department of Dictionaries", "There are also those who do not bury their relatives on the cover, and their relatives die and are entrusted to the gully." As his days passed, the foxes ate it, and the flies and mosquitoes snorted him. —"Mencius ̇ Teng Wen Gong I". In some areas of modern society, celestial burial rites still exist.

Maasai people

The Maasai people living in eastern Africa, after their death, they washed the whole body of the deceased with water, carefully smeared with a layer of cream, and placed it in the center of the house, and the relatives knelt silently around the body to pray for a day, and then the village elders led the way, and everyone carried the body to the wilderness, and put the body there, let the wild beasts devour it, and the birds pecked, so as to show that the Maasai people died and did not have a relationship with the land. As another example, celestial burial rituals still exist among the Parsi in India. Among the Parsis, "the vast majority of the members still believe in Zoroastrianism and maintain their original living customs." In the Zoroastrian surviving text, the Zand-Aresta Sutra, it is recorded that Zoroastrians "are to place the dead on the top of a mountain infested with birds and beasts, and let the birds eat their beaks."

Mongolian

Mongolian celestial burial (Mongolian for "Tengger Oruhiraga"), like earth burial, sand burial, cremation, double burial, water burial, wind burial, tree burial, cave burial, secret burial, is one of the Mongolian funeral rituals.

Mongolian celestial burial, from its origin, form, content and ritual implementation, is affected by factors such as natural geographical environment, livelihood and foreign culture. Therefore, the Mongolian celestial burial ceremony is permeated with the profound connotation of the ancient Mongolian social culture, and behind its simple form contains extremely reasonable ecological wisdom. This kind of wisdom consciously or unconsciously maintains the harmony between man and nature and between people, and plays a good role in protecting the fragile ecological environment of Inner Mongolia. Nowadays, Mongolian sky burial has become a historical memory with the deterioration of the ecological environment in Inner Mongolia, and has even been forgotten.

The traditional Mongolian burial ritual is to "put the corpse of the deceased with its face facing the sky, cover it with a cloth with a mantra written on it, and place it in the wilderness for foxes, wolves, and carnivorous birds to devour." Three days later, relatives come to visit, and if the body is eaten by birds and beasts, or there is not much left, it means that the deceased has lived a good life and the soul has returned to heaven. If it moves little or untouched, it is considered to have done evil in life, and even birds and beasts are unwilling to peck and devour. At this time, the lama is asked to chant sutras until the flesh and bones enter the belly of the eagle wolf, and then it is considered that he has fulfilled his heart for the deceased. ”

With the change of the times, the form of Mongolian celestial burial is constantly evolving, and according to the funeral method, we can roughly divide it into three forms: "burial in the same room", "wild burial" and "grassland burial".

Buried in the same room

"Burial in the same room", recorded in the "Mongolian Customs Guide", "In ancient times, the Mongolian clan regarded death as inauspicious, and the deceased's home had a 'bu ri ge ge ri' (a simple round house formed by three wood supports, a thick end of wicker or bamboo strips inserted in a circle around the three woods, and a thin end tightly tied up at a distance of about one meter), the corpse was placed in the 'bu ri ge ge ge ri', and the others led the cattle and sheep and pushed the lele cart to live far away, that is, after the person died, the body was separated from the 'bu ri ge? Geri's burial customs are discarded. It is also recorded in the "Brief History of the Mongols" that the Mongols in the Yuan Dynasty "if someone failed to heal, they put a spear wrapped in black felt in front of the door, and at this time, other than the relatives who cared for the sick were not allowed to enter the patient's room." For example, when the queen is about to die due to illness, she will be placed on a felt and transferred to the outside of the palace, and after her death, she will put it in the 'geri' (i.e., the day of the ministry and the day of the geri). And "Bu Ri Ge Ge Ri" so that the deceased "may have a tabernacle to live in in another world." It can be seen that "burial in the same room" is a form of Mongolian celestial burial that is different from Tibetan celestial burial.

Prairie burial

Grassland burial is the most important form of Mongolian celestial burial, and it is also a funeral form that is different from Tibetan celestial burial. Grassland burial is also known as "'burial grassland burial', 'throwing wild burial', 'open burial', 'open burial', 'ascending burial'". It is a funeral ritual in which the corpse is placed in the open air in a place where birds and beasts can eat it, so that the corpse can be eaten into the belly of birds and beasts. "'Prairie burial' can also be divided into different forms according to the social status and family relationship of the deceased." "For the bodies of deceased elders, the sons and daughters lay their bodies on green silk facing their right sides, while white lambskins were placed under the tail vertebrae." The purpose of this is to "worry about the cold of the elders when they sleep forever on the green earth". When ordinary people perform grassland burials, "the hada is covered with a large white canvas, and the body lies on the right side." If the deceased is a man, the middle finger of the right hand is inserted into the right ear so that his legs are slightly bent, and the left hand is tucked between the legs (or vice versa for women), and the face is facing the direction of the rising sun, and the head is covered with a hata, and the head rests on a stone or straw wrapped in a hata". This also shows that the Mongolian people attach great importance to this custom of the right side. If the family of the deceased attaches importance to the process of the corpse falling to the ground from the cart (horse, camel) naturally, "the mourner will put the corpse on the Lele cart and push it to no man's land, and then push the Lele cart with brute force, where the corpse falls, that is where the corpse returns, and the mourner will not look back and push the cart back after saying three times, 'This is the starting point of your path to immortality'."

Wild burials

"Wild burial", wild burial is also called 'wild burial', 'abandoned wild burial', etc. It is a funeral ritual in which "the body of the deceased is eaten by carnivorous birds after it has been placed in the wild." However, wild burials are not widely spread in the Mongolian Plateau, mainly in Henan Mongolian Autonomous County, Qinghai Province. The Mongols there believed that burial could not reincarnate the soul of the deceased, so they resorted to wild burial. They placed the corpse in a fixed place, and after the celestial burial master lit the cypress smoke, countless carnivorous birds flew to the vicinity of the corpse, and the celestial burial master recited the Sutra for the deceased and held a wild burial ceremony.

tibetan

[2] Sky burial is a burial custom formed under certain natural conditions and social environment. In ancient Tibetan society, there was a "primitive sky burial" or "natural sky burial". According to some Tibetan historical documents, the history of Tibetan celestial burial customs can be traced back to before the 7th century AD. According to the "Red History", the ancient Bon religion divided the world into three parts: heaven, earth and earth, among which the gods occupied a relatively important position. The first generation of Zampu in Tibet and the six Zampu after him were all sons of the gods who descended to the world along the ladder of heaven, and they all returned to the sky along the ladder after completing the human career entrusted by the gods, which is the "Seven Kings of Tianqi" recorded in history. The theory of celestial burial has been propagated even more mysterious.

The practice of celestial burial is closely related to the rise of Tibetan Buddhism and the import of Indian culture. According to the record of the Chinese historical book "Records of the Western Regions of the Tang Dynasty" about the custom of "sending the last funeral, the ritual has three or three days of wild burial, abandoning the forest and drinking beasts", some scholars believe that the customs of heavenly burial in Tibet originated from the ancient Indian "forest burial" and "wild burial". It is not a native ritual passed down by the ancestors of the Tibetan people. There are also records of this in Tibetan historical texts, and it is clear that the custom of celestial burial was brought by the famous Indian monk Tampa Sangyal, who founded the two sects of Xijie and Jueyu in Tibet, in the late 11th and early 12th centuries. It is said that when he was teaching the Dharma in Tibet, he vigorously advocated this burial custom and personally went to the heavenly burial platform to honor the deceased. Because Buddhists believe that offering the body to an eagle is a merit that can atone for sins in life and is conducive to the reincarnation of the soul, they have accepted this burial method, and it has gradually become a custom in Tibetan areas.

There is also a theory that Tibet spends most of the year in permafrost, which is hard to dig and difficult to bury because of the scarcity of trees, so the form of sky burial was adopted according to local conditions. A more plausible version is that celestial burials coincide with Buddhist teachings. In Buddhism, "generosity" is one of the symbols of believers, the highest state of charity is to give up, there is a moving story of "sacrificing oneself to feed the tiger" in the Buddhist scriptures, besides, according to Buddhist teachings, after death, the soul leaves ** into a new reincarnation, the corpse becomes a useless skin, and the corpse is fed to the eagle after death, which is also regarded as the last good deed in life.

The burial platform is rectangular, facing east and west, and is made of thick and long square granite blanks, and there is a thick stone pillar with a bowl mouth on the west side, and a hada is tied to the stone pillar, which is probably used to fix the head of the deceased. On the east side, there are two large stones about 50 centimeters higher than the base of the heavenly burial platform, one of the stones also has an axe, and on the west side of the hillside there are sharp knives and sharp blades, which are the tools used by the celestial burial master when performing the heavenly burial, and the burial platform is stained with blood, revealing a bit of gloom.

When I arrived at the heavenly burial platform, I saw that the heavenly burial master first used the cow dung he carried with him to make a fire, and after the fire was burned, he put on the tsamba, and the green smoke curled up to the clouds. After that, the celestial burial master sat cross-legged, recited the transcendent scriptures, shook the bulang drum in his hand, and blew the trumpet made of human bones, and the eagle vultures crouching in the surrounding mountains got the sound of the drum and trumpet, and then they took off one after another, hovered over the celestial burial platform, and landed around the celestial burial master one after another, forming a circle, quietly watching the celestial burial master's every move.

After the celestial burial begins, the celestial undertaker opens the shroud and places the body face down on the celestial burial platform, with the head fixed to the stone pillar with a hata. The first knife falls on the back, first three vertical knives, then three horizontal knives, meaning: "Rest in peace" Then dismember the limbs, cut them into small pieces, and take out the internal organs, and when these treatments are stopped, the celestial burial master signals to the surrounding eagles. After being greeted by the celestial burial master, the eagle vultures stepped forward one after another, and in a short time, all the muscles and internal organs were eaten cleanly. The celestial burial master smashed the remaining bones, mixed them with tsamba, defended them into balls, and then glued the blood on the ground to dry, and then threw them to the eagle vulture until nothing was missed. After doing all this, the celestial burial master went down the mountain to wash his hands and knives, and the whole celestial burial process was declared over.