Tree burial is also known as "open burial". The funeral methods of the Han and some ethnic minorities in the old days.

Tree burial is an ancient burial custom of the Yi people. There is a legend about "tree burial" in the Yi area of Yunnan: "In the Han Dynasty, when Zhuge Liang was alive, the concubine of the Yi ancestor General Meng Shu died. Meng Shu asked his subordinates to wrap their bodies in silk and satin and bury them on the green pine tree. People gathered around the tree to sing and dance in memory of this beautiful concubine." Local people also say that after the tree burial, the bones fall from the tree, which is not easy to deal with, so the bones wrapped in silk satin are packed with buckets, or put them in the tree holes, and some say that they are put in the mourning room, called "ghost buckets".

There are many opinions on the emergence of tree burial customs. Some believe that it is related to the safari economy; some scholars have proposed that the ancients believed that the spirits of the dead wandered in the forest, just like living next to the living, which may lead to the custom of tree burial; there is also a theory that tree burial originated from tree dwelling, and in the early days of primitive society, human beings lived on trees, based on the consideration of the concept of soul, the ancestors believed that since people lived on trees when they were born, they would also take "trees" as "homes" after death.

When humans choose trees to place their bodies, we must first understand the place that trees occupy in the ideas of our ancestors. In ancient times, human beings knew little about the world in which they lived, and had not yet grasped the objective laws of nature, so they had the worship of all things, believing that all things have spirits, so a large number of things to worship, wind, thunder, lightning, and even trees, flowers and plants were gods, and the worship of trees was often combined with the worship of God, ancestors, and mountains and rivers. Because the forest has a similar divinity of mountains and rivers, it has also become the object of people's sacrifice, such as the "Zhou Li?Shanyu" records that the duty of the person is "if the mountain and forest are sacrificed, then the Lord will repair it". In ancient times, regardless of the Son of Heaven, princes, doctors, and ordinary people, they would each set up a society to worship the gods, and the usual symbol of the society was "the community tree" and "the community forest". As a symbol of the earth god and even the ancestral god, the community tree and the forest have a lofty position in the ancient society, and the soup is a famous story because of the "great drought and no harvest for five years, but to pray for the mulberry forest", so the survival and decline of the community tree and the forest often represent the fate of the sect. Until the Han Dynasty, there were still many examples of people believing that forests were the place of refuge of the gods. At the end of the Han Dynasty, Cao Zhi also said: "The tree of gui, the real person who has attained the Tao will talk about immortals,...... High above the crowd, down is the poor pole heaven. In line with Cao Zhi's poem, the mural in front of the wooden coffin in the back room of the tomb of Horinglehan depicts a huge laurel tree with lush foliage, which is also an illusion that the soul of the tomb owner will ascend to heaven through the divine tree.

It can be seen that the appearance of tree burial is not accidental, but appears with the development of human ideology, and has a great relationship with the living environment and social environment of ancient human beings.

From the difference in form and wooden frame structure, tree burials can be roughly divided into the following types:

There are many examples of burials such as hanging corpses in trees in Chinese historical documents and ethnological materials, in which the body is wrapped in rags or brown skin and placed in a bamboo basket, which is hung in the woods of Shanchong to allow the body to decompose. This method of hanging the body in a tree, even now, can be preserved among the Oroqen, Hezhe, Evenki and Yao people in the Dayao Mountains in the south.

Oroqen

The funeral of the Oroqen people was both grand and mysterious. Ullen's relatives and friends first bathed the body in ice, snow or river water, then peeled the birch bark to make a special coffin, buried the deceased in it, and finally found a large red pine with a dense trunk, erected a wooden frame, and suspended the coffin in the air. In this way, there is no need to worry about the beast harming the corpse, and there is no need to avoid the difficulty of trapping things and few people or digging deep in the cold ground.

The reason why the Oroqen people are buried in trees is because they believe that the soul of a person is immortal after death, and will be recalled to the sky by the sun and turned into stars. Therefore, the Oroqen people will deliberately insert two pieces of wood at both ends of the coffin as wings for the soul to ascend to heaven.

Within one or two years after the burial of the tree, if the coffin does not fall to the ground, it means that the deceased's sins have not been atoned for and therefore have not ascended to heaven, and shaman sacrifices and prayers are required, and if the coffin falls to the ground, it means that the soul of the deceased has ascended to heaven.

Yao, Dong

The Chashan Yao in the Dayao Mountain area of Guangxi Province and the Dong people in Zhaoliu Township, Liping County, Guizhou Province, believe that the children are picked up and dropped off by a goddess of flowers who specializes in childbirth. Therefore, when the child is five or six years old, a sacrificial ceremony to reward the god of Hua Po is held, which is called "returning flowers". If the child dies before the flowers are returned, it means that the child's soul has returned to the god of flowers and is ready to be reincarnated. In order for them to be reincarnated smoothly, deceased dolls are generally "buried".

The specific method is to first dress the dead baby, put it in a dung basket or dustpan, cover it with a new white cloth (or black cloth), hang it on a branch or bamboo branch near the village, tie it with a straw rope, and let the wild beasts and birds of prey devour it. The ethnic group believes that this is the only way to re-impregnate the mother, otherwise it will lead to infertility or sterilization.

Lhoba

In Tibet, the Lhoba people tie the dead into fetal shapes and put them in rattan baskets, hang them on the branches of trees around the village, cover their heads with white cloth, wear a wooden mask, and place various foods and fruits. The corpse collector holds a gourd and pours water with his backhand. During this time, the lama would recite sutras to overhaul the souls of the dead, and make seven noodles and seven tigers out of cornmeal, and place them in front of the rattan basket for the burial of the deceased. The family of the deceased is required to pay homage to the deceased for three days, and each relative or friend is required to present the deceased with a road map with 22 patterns to indicate that the deceased will choose the right path all the way to heaven.

Binding the corpse to the tree, binding the corpse to the tree

Tie the body to a treeThis burial method uses rattan or rope to tie the deceased directly to the tree. There is not much information left about this burial method.

Placing the body on the platform means placing small tree sticks side by side on the two branches of the big tree, and then laying branches on top to build a small platform, and then placing the deceased on the platform. This method is practiced among the Oroqen and Evenki ethnic groups in the northeast.

Evenki

The Evenki people living in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region will park their homes for a day or two after death, and then transport the corpse up the mountain, select three or four trees at positive angles, set up a horizontal wooden frame between the tree rights, spread branches on it, and then display the body on the wooden frame, and put a pot, spoon, bowl, basin, cigarette pouch and other items that must be knocked off next to the deceased as burial goods. After that, it didn't matter if the bones fell or not.

In addition, in Australia, New Guinea, North America, northern Asia, etc., there are also many ethnic groups who have used this burial custom.