Earth. Water. Sky. F.I.R.E.
In this unfortunate season of disease, decay and death, it’s time to revisit the hereafter.
Ancient Indic civilisation offers scope for deliverance of the dead in three different ways to help regenerate the once born into the living at rebirth.
Earth Burial
Water Burial
Sky Burial
Also known as bhumi samadhi, jal samadhi and akash (sva) samadhi, these are rituals where the body is left in-state of ‘existential equilibrium’ before the soul regenerates in the form of cellular or DNA memory as protein nutrients, within another life form, as feast for creatures the body itself once fed on.
The Upanishads describe this rite of passage thus:
‘I am food, I am food, I am food!
I am the eater of food, I am the eater of food, I am the eater of food!’
India’s warrior class, the kshatriya, at the end of every great war, was given the sky burial, to be devoured as food by carrion eaters.
Those proceeding on vanaprastha (the third of the four stages of life) took recourse to sky burial as well, deep inside the forest.
It is likely that Krishna too was given the sky burial after being shot by a hunter in wilderness. Such a practice was also common among the ancient Persians and Turks.
India’s virtuous and noble, among them kings, sages, rishis, brahmins and the abundantly frugal, free from binding rituals, often opted for water burials, as did those among the poor and dispossessed, in the hope that they may come back to life in their journey through river.
Which is why even today, the bodies of stillborn Hindu babies are tied to stones and immersed in water instead of cremation by fire.
There’s a spot by the Ganga at Hardwar, where, even to this day, sages, their bodies tied to stones, are immersed in the river. On a clear day, visitors to the spot can see their inert bodies immersed in crystal clear water.
Valmiki’s Ramayana says that at the end of his long and eventful career as monarch, Raja Ramchandra took voluntary recourse to water burial in the Saryu at Ayodhya.
The prevalence of water burial has also been common among seafarers down the ages.
It is perhaps, no coincidence, that a pious man, utterly devoted to the faith he was born into, Osama bin Laden, was given a water burial when his body was interned into the Arabian Sea.
And then, there are those laid to rest in the earth, buried deep into the ground. There is evidence of this in the excavations of almost all ancient Indian civilisational sites from Mohenjodaro and Harappa to the most recent dig at Sanauli in Uttar Pradesh.
There is also evidence of burials among the tribes of rakshahas in Valmiki’s Ramayana, when the brave warriors of the forest were buried at the end of the massacre at Janasthan, ultimately resulting in the War of Lanka.
Even among India’s ascetic class, leading with Buddha, and later Shankaracharya and his successors, the practice of earth burial has been common.
Outside India, earth burial is common among the Abrahamic religions.
In contrast, the Vedic religion makes an exception where the deceased is allowed the choice not to return to any other life form at death, by becoming a feast for Fire, the life force for all Universe.
This privilege is reserved for the ‘twice-born’ who attain salvation in this one and only life by resorting to and leading a life of right and meritorious conduct.
It is they who walk the way of the fire, and transcend to unaltered carbon in the form of smoke and ash, hence, renouncing the path of rebirth or a second coming.
For them, there is no Hereafter!
For they are wayfarers in the path of moksha or nirvana or liberation!
postscript: There are newspaper reports this morning of water burial in the Ganga. It’s just the same as with sky and earth burials. Please don’t mock our dear departed. There is nothing absurd in their journey to the hereafter to either amuse or scandalise you. Just shut your eyes, fold your palms, and chant a prayer in a moment’s silence.
So that the souls of those gone on their never-ending journey may rest in peace for now!
Amen!
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