In the Toraya region of Indonesia, every August, residents of the Toraya community on the Indian island of Sulawesi carry dead loved ones out of their graves, dress them again, wash their bodies, talk to them, and even light cigarettes to make them pretend to smoke in honor of the ancestral spirit of indonesian mummies.
It is reported that this sense of death ceremony is considered to be the greatest celebration of life, because people here believe that the connection between life and death is infinite, and they also believe that the body of the deceased must return home to meet relatives and friends, otherwise it will not be able to be reborn, so it will evolve such a custom, because of this special custom, the Toraya people will first stop at home for several months after death, even in the year of the rat, so that the body will be mummified before burial, in order to prevent the body from rotting after burial.
The true process of a Toraya funeral
In Indonesia, the Torayas will hold the most complex funerals on earth to ensure that the dead are in danger in the afterlife. Tae-duan died 18 months ago at the age of 75. Tae Duan's family would bring him two meals a day and take care of him as if he were still alive. His body has been disposed of with formalin so it can be stored at home with his family. Meanwhile, the Toraya believe that Taiduan is not dead. People think he's just getting rid of pain and happiness, which means he's sick or sick. This marginal state will last until his funeral is held. The funeral will last more than a week. Thousands of guests will attend the funeral. Tai Duan's son, Parker Pillay, had to make sure everything was planned. According to the Toraya, if Taiduan was a government official before his death, Parker Pillay raised £170,000 to hold a funeral to confirm his father's identity when his body was placed in his home. Parker Pillay and his family will pay off funeral debts for the rest of their lives. In their opinion, as long as it can bring glory to Tai Duan after his death, it is worth it.
Narration of a man who attended a funeral
Sit here drinking tea and eating snacks, and then watch the villagers come one by one. For the Toraya people, the more people who attend the funeral, the better. When a lot of people come, they bring something with them. For example, we brought some cigarettes, but when more middle-aged people came, they only brought pigs. They tied the four corners together with bamboo poles and then put them on the bamboo poles, so we saw a lot of people coming one by one. Then each family brought a pig and put it on the ground.
Then I walked around and looked, and there was a big kitchen behind him. In the kitchen, many women are busy, washing rice or cutting vegetables. Then he saw a child holding the horns of a buffalo that had just been slaughtered. It seems that local children are very normal with this kind of thing. The buffalo heads in their hands also played in front of them. The horns cannot be arched. Just at the back door of the village, they would kill the pigs they had brought with them. After they kill the pigs, they will build a fire next to them. They will put the pig on the fire and roast the fur. After burning the skin, they open the pig and puffs. Then they would put pig treasure, pig offal, meat and blood in a bamboo tube, plus some food or something.