Cremation is the combustion, vaporization and oxidation of dead bodies to basic chemical compounds, such as gases, ashes and mineral fragments retaining the appearance of dry bone. Cremation may serve as a funeral or post-funeral rite that is an alternative to the interment of an intact dead body in a coffin or casket. Cremated remains, which do not constitute a health risk, may be buried or interred in memorial sites or cemeteries, or they may be retained by relatives and dispersed in various ways. Cremation is not an alternative to a funeral, but rather an alternative to burial or other forms of disposal.
In many countries, cremation is usually done in a crematorium. Some countries, such as India and Nepal, prefer different methods, such as open-air cremation.
HISTORY
ANCIENT
Cremation dates from at least 20,000 years ago in the archaeological record, with the Mungo Lady, the remains of a partly cremated body found at Lake Mungo, Australia.
Alternative death rituals emphasizing one method of disposal of a body - inhumation (burial), cremation, or exposure - have gone through periods of preference throughout history.
In the Middle East and Europe, both burial and cremation are evident in the archaeological record in the Neolithic era. Cultural groups had their own preferences and prohibitions. The ancient Egyptians developed an intricate transmigration of soul theology, which prohibited cremation, and this was adopted widely among other Semitic peoples. The Babylonians, according to Herodotus, embalmed their dead. Early Persians practiced cremation, but this became prohibited during the Zoroastrian Period. Phoenicians practiced both cremation and burial. From the Cycladic civilisation in 3000 BC until the Sub-Mycenaean era in 1200–1100 BC, Greeks practiced inhumation. Cremation appeared around the 12th century BC, constituting a new practice of burial, probably influenced by Anatolia. Until the Christian era, when inhumation again became the only burial practice, both combustion and inhumation had been practiced, depending on the era and location. Romans practiced both, with cremation generally associated with military honors.
In Europe, there are traces of cremation dating to the Early Bronze Age (c. 2000 BC) in the Pannonian Plain and along the middle Danube. The custom becomes dominant throughout Bronze Age Europe with the Urnfield culture (from c. 1300 BC). In the Iron Age, inhumation again becomes more common, but cremation persisted in the Villanovan culture and elsewhere. Homer's account of Patroclus' burial describes cremation with subsequent burial in a tumulus, similar to Urnfield burials, and qualifying as the earliest description of cremation rites. This may be an anachronism, as during Mycenaean times burial was generally preferred, and Homer may have been reflecting the more common use of cremation at the time the Iliad was written, centuries later.
Criticism of burial rites is a common form of aspersion by competing religions and cultures, including the association of cremation with fire sacrifice or human sacrifice.
Hinduism and Jainism are notable for not only allowing but prescribing cremation. Cremation in India is first attested in the Cemetery H culture (from c. 1900 BC), considered the formative stage of Vedic civilization. The Rigveda contains a reference to the emerging practice, in RV 10.15.14, where the forefathers "both cremated (agnidagdhá-) and uncremated (ánagnidagdha-)" are invoked.
Cremation remained common, but not universal, in both Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. According to Cicero, in Rome, inhumation was considered the more archaic rite, while the most honoured citizens were most typically cremated - especially upper classes and members of imperial families.
Christianity frowned upon cremation, both influenced by the tenets of Judaism and as an attempt to abolish Graeco-Roman pagan rituals. By the 5th century, the practice of cremation had practically disappeared from Europe.
In early Roman Britain, cremation was usual but diminished by the 4th century. It then reappeared in the 5th and 6th centuries during the migration era, when sacrificed animals were sometimes included with the human bodies on the pyre, and the deceased were dressed in costume and with ornaments for the burning. That custom was also very widespread among the Germanic peoples of the northern continental lands from which the Anglo-Saxon migrants are supposed to have been derived, during the same period. These ashes were usually thereafter deposited in a vessel of clay or bronze in an "urn cemetery". The custom again died out with the Christian conversion of the Anglo-Saxons or Early English during the 7th century, when inhumation became general.
MIDDLE AGES
Throughout parts of Europe, cremation was forbidden by law, and even punishable by death if combined with Heathen rites.[6] Cremation was sometimes used by authorities as part of punishment for heretics, and this did not only include burning at the stake. For example, the body of John Wycliff was exhumed years after his death and cremated, with the ashes thrown in a river, explicitly as a posthumous punishment for his denial of the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation.
On the other hand, mass cremations were often performed out of fear of contagious diseases, such as after a battle, pestilence, or famine. Retributory cremation continued into modern times. For example, after World War II, the bodies of the 12 men convicted of crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg Trials were not returned to their families after execution, but were instead cremated, then disposed of at a secret location as a specific part of a legal process intended to deny their use as a location for any sort of memorial. In Japan, however, erection of a memorial building for many executed war criminals, who were also cremated, was allowed for their remains.
HINDUISM AND OTHER INDIAN ORIGN RELIGIONS
Religions such as Hinduism, Jainism, and Sikhism practice cremation. In Buddhism cremation is acceptable but not mandated. The founder, Shakyamuni Buddha was cremated. For Buddhist spiritual masters who are cremated, one of the results of cremation are the formation of Buddhist relics.
A dead adult Hindu is mourned with a cremation, while a dead child is typically buried. The rite of passage is performed in harmony with the Hindu religious view that the microcosm of all living beings is a reflection of a macrocosm of the universe. The soul (Atman, Brahman) is the essence and immortal that is released at the Antyeshti ritual, but both the body and the universe are vehicles and transitory in various schools of Hinduism. They consist of five elements - air, water, fire, earth and space. The last rite of passage returns the body to the five elements and origins. The roots of this belief are found in the Vedas, for example in the hymns of Rigveda in section 10.16, as follows:
Burn him not up, nor quite consume him, Agni: let not his body or his skin be scattered,
O all possessing Fire, when thou hast matured him, then send him on his way unto the Fathers.
When thou hast made him ready, all possessing Fire, then do thou give him over to the Fathers,
When he attains unto the life that waits him, he shall become subject to the will of gods.
The Sun receive thine eye, the Wind thy Prana (life-principle, breathe); go, as thy merit is, to earth or heaven.
Go, if it be thy lot, unto the waters; go, make thine home in plants with all thy members.
— Rigveda 10.16
The final rites, in case of untimely death of a child, is usually not cremation but a burial. This is rooted in Rig Veda's section 10.18, where the hymns mourn the death of the child, praying to deity Mrityu to "neither harm our girls nor our boys", and pleads the earth to cover, protect the deceased child as a soft wool.
SATI
The act of sati refers to a funeral ritual in which a widowed woman committed suicide on the husband's funeral pyre. While a mention of self-immolation by one of several wives of an Indian king is found in a Greek text on India, along with self-immolation by widows in Russia near Volga, tribes of Thracians in southeast Europe, and some tribes of Tonga and Fiji islands, vast majority of ancient texts do not mention this practice. Rare mentions of such cremations in aristocratic circles appear in texts dated to be before the 9th century AD, where the widow of a king had the choice to burn with him or abstain. Ancient texts of Hinduism make no mention of Sati; its early medieval era texts forbid it, while post 10th century medieval era texts partly justify it and criticize the practice. The practice of sati, grew after 1000 CE, becoming a particularly significant practice by Hindus in India during the Islamic wars of conquest in South Asia.
This practice was made illegal in 1829 during the British colonial rule of India. After gaining independence from British colonial era, India passed a series of additional laws. The Indian Sati Prevention Act from 1988 further criminalised any type of aiding, abetting, and glorifying of sati. In modern India, the last known case of Sati was in 1987, by Roop Kanwar in Rajasthan. Her action was found to be a suicide, and it led to the arrest and prosecution of people for failing to act and prevent her suicide during her husband's cremation.
BALI
Balinese Hindu dead are generally buried inside the container for a period of time, which may exceed one month or more, so that the cremation ceremony (Ngaben) can occur on an auspicious day in the Balinese-Javanese Calendar system ("Saka"). Additionally, if the departed was a court servant, member of the court or minor noble, the cremation can be postponed up to several years to coincide with the cremation of their Prince. Balinese funerals are very expensive and the body may be interred until the family can afford it or until there is a group funeral planned by the village or family when costs will be less. The purpose of burying the corpse is for the decay process to consume the fluids of the corpse, which allows for an easier, more rapid and more complete cremation.
ISLAM
Islam strictly forbids cremation. Islam has specific rites for the treatment of the body after death.
WIKIPEDIA
