CREMATION CEREMONIES

Bali is famous for it is cremation. A cremation in Bali is something worth seeing and it is a very joyous occasion. Sooner or later every Balinese is cremated. A cremation is very costly. There are so many offerings involved; a cremation tower has to be built; a sarcophagus in the form of a "Lembu", bull, "Singga", Lion, or a "Gajah mina", fish body with an elefant head, has to be carved. Also the hundred of people who come to help have to be entertained with food, cigarettes and other things
The tower is a means to carry the body to the cementery and the sarcophagus is where the corpse is burned. They are not really an essential part of any cremation and so a cremation can do without them.

But the tower is also a status symbol as is the sarcophagus. The status symbol is number of tiers a tower can have. The number of tiers of tower is always odd,
Example; 3, 5, 7, 9 or 11. Eleven is highest number. King and their family and members of the Brahmin caste are entitled to a tower of 11 tiers, Ksatriyas can have tower of 9, Weisyas of 7, and Sudra of 5. A “Lembu” or Bull is for King and their family and the Brahmin caste. Ksatriyas are burned in a “Singa” or Lion and Weisyas have the same sarcophagus as the Ksatriyas and the Sudras have the “Gajah mina”. Because of the tower and the sarcophagus being a status symbul a cremation is very seldom without them.
If a poor man dies his body is buried first and after many years, after the family has saved enough money for cremation, his body will be cremated. If a priest dies, because he is a holy man, he is not allowed to be buried, even if the family of the priest is poor. His corpse must be cremated. From the time he dies until the day of his cremation his body is kept in the home. This also happens to the dead of the royal family. The body of a dead king is kept in the home not because he is holy, but because of prestige. The people do not think it right for a king to be buried first and cremated later.

Keeping a body in the home is very costly affair, because every day now offerings for the dead king have to be made and there must be a few people who keep watch day and night and see nothing undesirable happens to the king.
Poor people who cannot finance their own cremation wait for high priests or kings or princes to be cremated so that the can join them. This considered a very high privilege and honor to join someone very important in his cremation, because the people are sure to have a good and elaborate cremation. Beside the honor such cremations give to the joiners it is also very cheap for them. The joiners have to contribute very little when compared with the cost of their private cremation. I have witnessed such a mass cremation where 600 dead join a high priest.
A mass cremation can also take place when the cemetery of the village will soon be full. This kind of mass cremation is always of dead are made and kept in the common shed, built for the purpose of keeping the effigies there. Graves are opened and the bones are taken out kept out; they wrapped in a piece of white cloth; they are not taken home but kept in a shed on the cemetery. The tombs are leveled, because the dead are not there any longer and by so doing the people make space for new dead.
At such a mass cremation, since the people are from different groups, one sees different types of tower and sarcophagus. It is always a spectacular sight to see so many, although small, and so many sarcophaguses carried to the cemetery in colorful procession. The last procession of cremation the ash of the body they bring and true to the sea.
The purpose of a cremation is to free the souls from the ties with the earth and cleanse them, so that they hopingly reincarnate as better human being. The preparation of large cremation takes a long time; it is time consuming and costs lot money.
Every day thousand of men and women were doing preparations for this magnificent cremation, three days before the day of burning the family spent already 11 million rupiah. It is a huge amount at any time but more so in 1962 when the rupiah was still really hard.