There is a huge mass of stories in which dead people are the main characters. Each culture has its own way of burying the dead, seemingly firmly drawing the line between the real and the other world.

There are countless beliefs about how our soul is transformed after imminent death, and people have developed a long tradition of funerals, special rites and rituals.

Regardless of culture, burial practices and beliefs, in most cases the dead corpse remains dead for the rest of the time.

Indonesia, The Walking Dead.

In our history, we will have to remember the attitude towards everything mystical, because in Indonesia, the dead can easily come to visit. I'm not talking now about those terrible zombies, or vampires that crawled out of the grave and clattered their teeth in search of a victim. Many may not believe it, but Toraja culture has a term for the Walking Dead. Moreover, this is not a metaphorical term, but, most likely, a real reality, without any mysticism with revived corpses.

Toraja, an ethnic group of people representing the indigenous population of the mountains of South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Locals build houses with huge gabled roofs that look like boats (tongokonan). Also, the locals have long been famous for their exquisite wood carvings and peculiar traditions. The Toraja were well known for their elaborate and highly bizarre funeral rites, as well as their choice of resting place for the dead.

This eerie fascination with death can be seen throughout the tribe's villages. The impression is enhanced by elaborate burial sites carved directly into the rocky cliffs in the traditional style. local residents. Unique houses, tongokonan - immaculately decorated with buffalo horns, a symbol of wealth, which are not only lived in, but also used as resting places for the corpses of recently deceased relatives.

In the funeral rites of the Toraj, one can see all their longstanding attitude towards death, or rather a strong belief in the afterlife, and the transition process from death to burial is a long one. When a person dies, his corpse is not always interred, as a rule, washed and kept in the house. To avoid the effects of decomposition, the body of the deceased is covered with the traditional ingredients, betel leaves with banana juice. Such residence in some cases can be delayed for a long time.

In poorer families, the deceased may be kept in the next room of their own home. Because the funeral ceremony in Torajo is usually an extravagant affair and requires the presence of all relatives, no matter how far away they may be. Quite naturally, waiting for the arrival of all the relatives of the deceased takes a very long time, plus, it is necessary to raise money for an expensive funeral service and the burial itself.

For us, this will seem something strange, unusual, not everyone is able to sleep next to the dead, although this is not particularly unpleasant for the villagers of Torajo. The local society believes that the process of death is long, the soul slowly and gradually leads its own to "Puya".

During this waiting period, the corpse is still treated as if it were still alive. The soul is believed to keep close by, waiting to make its way to Puya. The body is dressed and cared for regularly, even to the point of offering to dine, as if it were still a living member of the family. And only when all the agreements are met, the relatives will gather, the funeral ceremony begins.

Depending on the level of wealth of the deceased, the funeral can be incredibly lavish and extravagant, including mass festivities for several days. During the ceremony, hundreds of relatives of the family gather at the solemn place of Rante, where they express their grief with music and singing.

A common feature of such events, especially among the wealthy people of the tribe, is the sacrifice of buffalo and pigs. It is believed that buffaloes and pigs are necessary for the soul of the deceased to go to, and the more animals were sacrificed, the faster the journey will pass. To do this, depending on the wealth of the family, I can slaughter up to a dozen buffaloes and hundreds of pigs, accompanying the event with a fanfare of revelers who dance and try to catch the flying blood with bamboo straws.

The shedding of blood on the ground is considered an important moment for the soul to pass into Puya, and in some cases, special cockfights known as "bulangan londong" are held as if the blood of all those buffaloes and pigs is not enough.

When the celebrations are over and the body is ready for burial, the corpse is placed in a wooden box, after which it will be laid in a cave specially carved for burial (did you think they would bury it in the ground?). Of course, this is a specially prepared cave that meets the requirements necessary for the ritual.

In the event that infants or young children are buried, the box is hung on a rock with thick ropes until they rot and the coffin falls to the ground, after which it will be hung again. The ritual of such a burial with hanging coffins echoes the tradition of the Indians who lived in anomalous place known as "".

They try to place their dead Toraja higher, because placed between Heaven and Earth, it will be easier for the soul to find its way to the afterlife. The burial cave houses many of the tools and equipment needed by the soul in the afterlife, including money, and oddly enough piles of cigarettes.

Walking with a mummified corpse.

Funeral caves may have only one coffin, and be complex mausoleums for the rich, there may be rich decoration, and the place itself can wait for the death of relatives. Simply put, this is a kind of family crypts.
Some of the graves are over 1,000 years old, with coffins containing rotten bones and skulls. However, after the actual burial, in the Toraja tribe, this does not mean that no one else will see the deceased.

Photograph of the alleged corpse walking

Here there is the most unusual ritual in relation to the dead, giving rise to tales of the living dead or zombies. Once a year, in August, the inhabitants come to the caves to the dead, they not only fix the broken coffin if necessary, but also take care of the dead: they wash and bathe the dead!

The ritual is known as "Ma'nene", a ceremony for caring for corpses. Moreover, the care procedure is carried out regardless of how long they have been dead or how old they were. Some of the corpses spent so long in the caves that they mummified quite well.

At the end of the procedure of refreshing the dead, the inhabitants hold them upright and "walk" with them through the village to the place of their death and back. After this strange walk, the inhabitant of the afterlife is again sent to the coffin, and left until the next year, when the whole process is repeated again.

To some, this may seem rather creepy and strange, however, in some remote areas of Indonesia, more strange ceremonies are allegedly taking place: the dead here can walk on their own!

The truth and that funeral rites and the rituals in Toraja are extremely demanding, because in order for the spirit of the deceased to have the opportunity to pass into the afterlife, certain conditions must be strictly observed.

First, absolutely all relatives of the family of the deceased must be present at the funeral. Secondly, the deceased must be interred in the village of his birth. If these conditions are not met, the soul will forever linger around the body in limbo, and will not be able to travel to the afterlife. Such an assurance led to the fact that people did not want to leave their native villages, fearing to die far from their place of birth, thereby depriving the soul of the opportunity to enter the afterlife.

The walking dead are going home.

All this created some problems in the past, when the Dutch came here with colonization. The Toraja lived in remote, autonomous villages that were completely isolated from each other and from the outside world, with no roads connecting them.

When someone died far from their place of birth, it was difficult for the family to get the body to the right place.
Rugged and mountainous terrain, long distances, represented a rather serious problem. The solution to the problem found was unique, and boiled down to the fact that the corpses should go home on their own!

In order for the deceased to independently reach the village where he was born, and thereby remove a lot of trouble from loved ones, the shamans began to look for a person who had the power to temporarily return the dead to life. Perhaps this is from the area of ​​black magic used by shamans to bring the dead back to temporary life.

The Walking Dead are said to be largely unaware of their condition, and often do not react to what is happening. Lacking the ability to express thoughts or emotions, reanimated corpses are only able to perform the most basic tasks, such as walking.

When the deceased is brought back to life, it is for only one purpose, to drag their feet to the place of their birth, guided by the instructions of the shaman or family members. Although legends are told, in some cases the walking dead walk on their own.

Have you now imagined how you met a walking corpse on the road? Do not be afraid, in fact, special people always walked ahead of a group of walking dead, they pointed the way, and warned about the dead man going to the grave.

By the way, black magic is certainly a powerful thing, but the journey to the place of birth had to take place in silence, it was forbidden to turn to the animated one. One had only to call out his name, as all the power of magic collapsed, and the dead finally died.

The walking dead, the danger of a zombie invasion?

It is not even known whether a bullet can achieve such a striking effect and knock down a living dead man, but the broken spell knocks him down in one fell swoop. However, if one panics and starts preparing for the inevitable zombie outbreak, then I will note that this process is only a temporary effect. This is the need to transport the corpse to the place of birth, although depending on the distances this may take several days or even weeks.

At the same time, there is no word on what happens if a resident dies abroad. Although it is known, being in a “zombie” state, the dead did not growl, did not attack a person in order to bite, this is a completely passive creature to the surroundings. After he reaches his native place, he again becomes a simple corpse, awaiting his burial in the usual manner. Interestingly, as they say, the body can be reanimated to life again so that the deceased gets to the coffin.

Nowadays, with the increase in the number of roads and the availability of transport, the ritual Walking Dead regarded as an unnecessary practice, in modern times, bringing the dead back to life is extremely rare in Toraja culture.

Needless to say, the modern generation does not believe much in the stories of grandmothers, considering the walking dead to be an old fiction.

However, some outlying villages allegedly still practice the ancient rites of resurrecting the dead. There is such an isolated village in these places "Mamasa", especially known for the practice of this terrible rite.

Here they still use the possibilities of black magic to talk with the dead and tell them about the accomplishments of their descendants. Often, these moments are captured by cameras and become public.

Despite the fact that the corpses in the attached photographs look very real, they are considered nothing more than a hoax. It is also suspected that the photographs show people suffering from some kind of disfiguring disease, giving the body the illusion of death.

It is difficult to say what is present here more, folklore or deceit. Or maybe in the Toraja tribe, shamans really have great power, temporarily raising the dead and enabling them to walk? In any case, creepy and nightmarish traditions exist in South Sulawesi, where some residents believe that what is happening to the dead is real.

Wandering corpses of Toraja

For a group of Toraja peoples (translated as highlanders) who inhabit South Sulawesi, in Indonesia, the concept of “resurrection from the dead” is completely literal.

Every year, in August, they have a Manene ritual. During this period, many families (in this case, villages, since each village there constitutes a family community) climb the rocks and enter the caves to collect the corpses of their dead relatives. They bathe them, care for them and change their clothes.

After that, the mummified corpses march through the entire village, and return to their place of eternal rest.

An interesting and rather creepy ritual, but it is only an echo of an ancient ritual that was performed among the Toraja before this area lost its isolation and became a Dutch colony.

One of Toraja's wandering corpses
Toraji have always lived apart, practically in complete isolation. Their villages were built on the basis of one family, in fact, being one, separate family. Although the Toraji traveled from village to village to avoid incestuous marriages (which was practiced only among the upper class of the Toraji), they never ventured far beyond their habitat.

The reason for this was Toraja's belief that after death, the spirit must linger near the body before going to "Puya", the abode of souls.

For this to happen, the soul must be close to the family. If a person is too far from his village when he dies, his body may not be found and the soul will forever be stuck in the body.

Fortunately, Toraja has a means of sending the soul to "Puya" when the body is lost, although this ritual is very expensive, and not everyone can afford it.

To do this, they resort to the services of a "magician" who can summon a dead body and soul back to the village. The corpse, having heard his call, rises and begins its way back on unsteady legs.

After the corpse is spotted, people run forward to warn of its approach. This is not done out of fear, but to properly perform the ritual, so that the corpse, for sure, and as quickly as possible, gets home. If someone touches the corpse while it is walking, it will again collapse lifelessly to the ground. Those running ahead must warn everyone that a corpse is following them and in no case should they be touched.

Tongkonan - traditional elevated houses of Toraja
After the corpse has completed its journey, it is wrapped in several layers of cloth and taken to a safe place, usually a room under the house. For the upper classes, the corpse is placed on piles between their "Tongkonans", the ancestral elevated houses. In this case, the body is waiting for the funeral feast. Such a wait can last for several days, and sometimes months.

A funeral feast can be very expensive, and the richer the family, the more magnificent and expensive the funeral is. They can involve thousands of Toraja and can last for several days. During the funeral feast, cockfights, the slaughter of buffalo (the more buffalo, the richer the family) and chickens are held.

At the end of the celebrations, the body is washed, dressed, and finally taken to a place of rest. According to legend, in ancient times, the corpses themselves went to their resting place. As a rule, the body is placed in a coffin, and the coffin in a cave carved into the rock specifically for this purpose. If the deceased was a child, the coffin is lifted on ropes of vines until it falls to the ground.

Toraji are convinced that the body and soul should rest between heaven and earth, which is why they arrange burials in the rocks, at a height. They carve wooden effigies, symbolizing their dead relatives, and place them on the rocks at the entrances to the caves.

This article was automatically added from the community

La douleur passe, la beauté reste (c) Pierre-Auguste Renoir

I met a remark that there is a village of the dead in Bali, where the bodies lie without burial. Became interesting.
For starters, quotes from the travel forum (forum.awd.ru).

- Then the path lies to Lake Batur, if you turn left at the T-shaped intersection, you can visit the temple of Batur. Having fought off the steamers of sarongs and sashes, you can go inside and look at the lake from the highest point.
The temple was under renovation, nothing interesting.
Moving along the lake, you can eat at one of the many restaurants and great views for photography, then go down to the lake.
The road is narrow and broken.
The final destination is hot springs. There are three pools there. The water temperature is 40 degrees, on the shore the guys catch lake fish (like crucian carp) on mud.
On the other side of the lake, a village is visible, where a large tree grows in the center. Under this tree, they pile up the dead fellow villagers and they don’t seem to deteriorate ... In general, Hindus are strange people.

- Look for the "dead" in central Sulawesi, there are such open cemeteries, in Bali it's all business, and Batur Island is generally wiring on wiring.

- In 1993, for the first time, I came to Bali with my colleagues. They rented a car on the island and began to drive everywhere. We arrived at a lake. A local body showed up there and offered to show the village of the dead. However, in the place where we arrived, a tribe lived that was not friends with the tribe that owns the village. The local said that it’s bad to go from here, they won’t show anything.
To show everyone, you need to drive along the lake to the place where a friendly tribe lives. We drove, drove, loaded into the boat, which almost capsized in the middle of the lake. We reached the first village of the dead. It buries those who died unmarried (married) or committed suicide. They did not stop, but floated to the main village of the dead. Sailed. Pretty cool. So so. They simply lay their dead on the ground, as they are in flip flops and some simple clothes. From above when they make a hut from the rain, and when not. As they explained to us, these aborigines have 11 main gods, so when the "villagers" die, they are laid one by one in a row on the ground, and when the 12th dies, the skull and tibia of the first are laid on special steps (located 10 meters away), and in its place put the 12th, and so on. Hundreds of skulls and piles of tibia bones lie on these steps. There are a lot of photos, but I didn’t use digital then, so the photos are on paper. If someone is interested, I will distill the most interesting ones into numbers this weekend and post them in the topic. By the way, then I went to Bali twice more and asked Russian speaking guides to show my friends this place, but they turned on the fool with enviable constancy and claimed that either there was no such place, or they had not heard anything about it.
By the way, the villager who accompanied us told us that there are tribes in Kalimantan who bury their dead vertically under sandalwood trees. In this case, the head of the deceased is above the ground. Thus, the cemetery is a lot of skulls "scattered" under the trees.

- The burial on Lake Batur (Bali) must be seen before Sulawesi - otherwise there will be no impression.
It consists of several huts under which corpses lie. The bodies themselves are not visible. All sorts of pots, rusty plates and other rubbish are lying nearby. If you do not know in advance what kind of place this is, you will take it for an ordinary garbage dump. True, bones come across among the garbage. Nearby on a step ten skulls are laid out in a row. If desired, you can hold it in your hands. Especially with them, the Japanese love to be photographed.
There is a bunch of guys right there, saying that they are their relatives and rather persistently begging for 100,000 rupees. from a person.
The coolest old woman there, who swims next to the pier on a small dugout boat and shakes money from tourists, and if they don’t give it, she swears angrily.
IMHO-classic razvodilovo for organized visitors. If you want to hold a shard of homo sapiens in kind, then you can go.
If you want to see really interesting burials, then go to Sulawesi in the Rantepao region. There you can walk around the caves, in which the bones will roll under your feet, lie on the ledges in the walls of the skull, and above in the darkness bats squeak and flap their wings. Also in some caves, coffins with skeletons have been preserved. The boards are rotten and the skeletons are clearly visible through the holes.
It works well on especially impressionable natures.
There is a ficus in which small children were buried. The holes are closed with special covers.
In the mountains near Rantepao there is a rock with a bunch of graves. Some are very artistic.
More on the cemetery theme - the funeral ritual in Rantepao. If you want to see the "sea of ​​blood" in reality, you are at the funeral ceremony. They cut the throats of buffaloes - blood spurts like from a fire hose. With us, five pieces were scored. Then my wife's hands shook for another hour, although she filmed the ceremony normally.

We are back to familiar places. A ritual is being performed in the southern part of Sulawesi, and the remains on Lake Batur are the same.

It is believed that it is better for women not to enter the village of the dead - this threatens with a landslide or a volcanic eruption.

Let's go back to Sulawesi.

What is Tana Toraja? An area with unique funeral rites and bizarre houses. Many centuries ago, local residents, sending their dead on their last journey, made carved coffins-sarcophagi in the form of boats, animals, put the lifetime values ​​​​of the deceased there, and placed the sarcophagi at the foot of the rocks. But over time, such graves began to be looted, and the rite became more complicated - now the bodies were placed in caves or niches carved in the rocks, or the coffins were hung on sheer cliffs where it was extremely difficult to get them. Tana Toraja and Sulawesi in general from there and further north is a territory, most of the population of which are fierce adherents of Christianity, which is not so easy in the two hundred millionth (largest) Muslim country in the world. But it was in the burial traditions that history and the present intermingled. Locals say that even their Muslim tribesmen still bury in such an unusual way, as well as Christian Toraj. If a Toraja dies outside of Tana Toraja, they will certainly try to deliver his body to his homeland. Previously, it was supposed that each village had its own steep mountain for burial. But there are fewer and fewer places, so villages can use common "cemeteries". By the way, it was customary to place dead children under one year old in hollows or crevices of trees, and over time the body was enveloped by a tree, going inside the trunk.

Another tradition is to place figures of the dead in front of a cave or a niche, some of them in full growth. There are faces that are exact death masks of the dead. Naturally, not everyone could and can afford real, full-scale figures. Again, many figures are stolen by antique hunters. There are whole balconies with figures - how spectators stand at sports competitions.
Once returning to the city in the evening, we read that along the way there will be children's burials in a small gorge. Went out there. There were dusk. From a niche, from behind a fence, a large bat crawled out. Although in size - a whole bat. Between the platform where we stood and the rock with burials there is a small abyss, about fifteen meters. At the bottom lay collapsed rotten, apparently very old coffins and, again, a lot of skulls and bones. Curiosity outweighed everything, and I climbed down the steep path from the edge. Mishka said that this was already superfluous, but he also climbed after me. There was a crack in the rock. As I approached, a mouse flew out. I peered inside through force - incomprehensible sounds were heard, a bit like the cooing of pigeons or some kind of squeak. The bear came up and took a picture. We got out quickly. Feeling - creepy, goosebumps. Alas, the photos do not convey this.
On the last day, we went to supposedly the oldest surviving burials - some as much as 800 years old. One can see lonely sticking out logs on which coffins used to hang, one can also see just holes in the rocks - everything has long rotted and collapsed into thick grass at the foot, but the holes punched centuries ago remain. The inn asks if we would like to attend a funeral ceremony - with a sacrifice and so on. Thank you, I don’t want blood for some reason ... and the same report, but with a photo.

In the south of Indonesia's third largest island, Sulawesi, lies the "Tana Toraja," or "land of the Torajas." This is one of the most interesting and the most beautiful places in the country. There are only about 300 thousand Toraj. They are mainly engaged in rice cultivation, and are famous for building amazing houses resembling boats. The administrative center of Tana Toraja is Makale, a small and very quiet town. In the center is an artificial lake. A rather strange sculptural composition is installed on the shore: a funeral procession consisting of only men.
The central temple of the city is Protestant. Inside, everything is very ascetic - benches for parishioners, a preacher's rostrum. The main attraction of Rantepao is not the central cathedral and not a monument on the square, but the caves in which the dead are buried. Toraji believe that the higher the grave of the deceased, the closer he is to heaven. Let's try to get to these graves. The city cemetery is a rock. At a height of approximately 30 meters, it is all dotted with both artificial and natural grottoes. They contain the remains of the dead. Nearby, a rather deep niche is hollowed out in the rock, in which life-sized human figures carved from wood are placed. These statues depict those people who are buried here. The statues are dressed. When clothes decay, they are replaced with new ones. What is accompanied by a special ceremony.
Hollowing out the grotto is hard work. It takes several years and is expensive. Therefore, poor families who cannot afford to build a crypt in the rock bury their relatives in natural caves. To get into the tomb, it is necessary to overcome a rather long corridor. Before entering it, it is customary to leave small cash offerings. The crypt is filled with wooden coffins. The most recent burial was made just a month ago. The funeral rite is perhaps the most interesting thing to see in southern Sulawesi. It is the most important event in the life of the community here, even more important than a wedding.
I ended up in Kesu just in the midst of preparations for the funeral of the local elder. This village is quite typical for Tana Toraja. A long street, on one side of it, with facades to the north, there are houses, on the other - barns for rice. The roofs are the same for both. The dwelling house of the Torajas is called "tongonan". Erect it amazing building without a single nail. The facade is trimmed with carved boards, on which an ornament is applied, and decorated with a buffalo head. Bizarrely shaped roofs are usually made of bamboo planks. They are laid so that the top is on the bottom, like tiles.
Everyone, rich and poor, participates in the preparations for the funeral ceremony. Moreover, the deceased was a headman. People, like ants, drag boards, bamboo poles, palm leaves. After all, several hundred people from other villages will soon arrive in Kesu. For guests, they build something like covered verandas. It is convenient to watch the ceremony from them. Here, guests are treated to the meat of sacrificial animals. Toraja funerals are the biggest celebration. It is a holiday, because these people believe that after death they will go to heaven - they simply do not have hell. The more luxurious the funeral, the closer the soul of the deceased is to the creator, whose name is Puang Matua. Animals are slaughtered to be presented as a gift to the gods, of which the Torajas have many. The main one is Puang Matua. He gets selected bulls. And these chickens are meant for the petty gods, devata. Christianity among the locals is peculiar: they go to church and do not forget their gods. I joined the builders and made my modest contribution to the preparations for the funeral. I dragged the boards, but it turned out to be much more pleasant to paint simple patterns. The colors that the Toraj paint on guest verandas have their own symbolism. Red is blood and life, white is purity, yellow is the power of God, black is death.
Guest verandas are built around a "rante", a small piece of land on which hewn stones are set. Each is dedicated to the founder of the family, of which there are several in the village. Near the stones of the ancestors, and sacrificial buffaloes are slaughtered. These sleek beautiful animals do not work in the field. Instead, small-scale mechanization works. Buffaloes are raised only for sacrifice. The horns are not thrown away, they are attached to a pole, which is installed in front of the house. Buffalo horns symbolize courage among Torajas. It's like they're stacked on top of each other. They show how many animals the owner of the house has slaughtered for funeral ceremonies. This one, for example, sacrificed more than 2 dozen. The more horns, the richer the owner.
Lord Tin-Tin Sarunalo, the son of the deceased village headman, oversees the preparations for the funeral. He told us:
My father lived to be 82 years old. He was a good man, wise, helped everyone. Died a year ago. All this time, our family raised funds for the funeral. We will sacrifice 40 buffaloes and 80 pigs. Their father will need them in the next world. Until the ceremony is done, the soul of the deceased will remain before the gates of heaven. She can even return to earth to harm the living.
Mr. Ting-Ting invited me to his Tongonan. A kitchen with a hearth is set up on the street behind the house. A narrow staircase leads to the living quarters. At the top there is also something like a hearth. Incense is smoked in it at night, repelling mosquitoes. There are two rooms in the house. There is no furniture. They sleep here on the floor covered with mats. The walls are decorated with daggers. On the ceiling is a "kandaur", a wicker ceiling with a long fringe from the evil eye. An open coffin with the deceased stands right in the room. His body is embalmed. The Tin-Tin family has been living with the dead man under the same roof for a year now and nobody cares. Tin-Tin introduced me to his brother Layuk. And he told how everything will happen at the funeral:
- When the carver finishes the wooden figure of the father, the body will be transferred to another coffin. After that, both the coffin and the figure will be put up on a special platform. They will stay there for 12 days. Exactly so much the soul of the deceased remains in his wooden image. All this time the celebration continues. People eat the meat of sacrificial animals and have fun. A new coffin for Father Layuk is being made in a local workshop. Here they are also constructing a model of a traditional Toraja house, which will be placed on top of the coffin, and a stretcher for this whole structure. At the end of the holiday, the coffin will be carried around the village and placed in the family crypt.

The wooden image "tau-tau", into which the soul of the deceased should temporarily move, is cut from the yellow wood of the utsada tree. The arms are made removable to make it easier to dress the sculpture in clothes. The master worked on the image of the deceased for a month. Worked from photography. On it the elder is still young. Although the sculpture is not yet completely finished, it is clear that the carver managed to achieve a certain similarity. The sculpture costs the customer 4 million rupees. It's about five hundred dollars. Therefore, only very wealthy families can afford a real "tau-tau". Ordinary ones do without portrait resemblance, if only the sex of the deceased could be determined.

Previously, they simply denoted the gender of a person. Now it has become fashionable to make statues with portrait resemblance, but they are put up on balconies less and less often - because of the risk of theft, tutya is kept at home. And their eyes are no longer white. The old tau-tau look voodoo colorful and frightening, especially in all sorts of desert places.

Own crypt, and even if it is concrete, is also a sign of wealth. Its shape can be any, but everyone has a traditional roof, like a “tongonan”. Such mausoleums are called “banua tangmerambu”, “a house without a kitchen”, by the Toraj. At the crypt, offerings are made to the ancestors: it can be food, coins, even cigarettes. But the bulk of the villagers in this village bury the dead in caves and grottoes already familiar to us, next to which “tau-tau” are installed in niches.
A path leads up to the caves. Along the way, now and then come across "hanging graves". These are beams embedded in the rock, on which coffins are installed. Now they almost never bury like that. Over time, the tree collapses and the coffins fall. The remains have to be put in the surviving graves. So the bones of the ancestors of Kesu villagers have long been mixed up.
Finally, here is the cave. It is not much different from the one I saw in the city of Rantepao. This one, however, is less deep, and there are fewer coffins here. Crosses stand next to some, as a reminder that Christians still rest here.
Most Toraja consider themselves Christians. But you must admit, it doesn’t look like Christian customs at all. What surprised me the most was not the dead in the house or even the sacrifices, but the fact that the Toraj do not believe in hell. And if there is no hell, then everything is allowed for them.

The funeral ceremony in Tana Toraja belongs to the category of rambusolo - sad ceremonies (in literal translation "descending smoke"). According to the Toraja religion Aluk Todolo, which is based on the cult of ancestors, the ceremony is obligatory.
The procedure of the ceremony is the same regardless of the caste to which the deceased belonged. The funeral is carried out in several stages: first, the coffin with the body is carried around the village, then numerous relatives come to say goodbye, later animals are sacrificed - the Toraj believe that their souls will move with the soul of the deceased to heaven, and, finally, the body is buried. For the ceremony, the body is required. If the body is not found, the person is not considered dead. The body is not cremated, they are buried either in a house-grave - an analogue of our crypt, or in a stone grave.
The funeral ceremony is presented to tourists as the main attraction, something special, incomprehensible, supernatural, requiring mandatory attendance. Indeed, once at the ceremony, many do not understand what is happening. Crowds of people in black, squealing animals, men with machetes and carcasses of dead buffaloes in the blood. The guides chant the memorized phrases “now they will sacrifice the most expensive buffalo, stand to the left, it will be better seen.” Tourists startle and hastily take pictures against the backdrop of "something-there-terrible." At the end, everyone gets on the bus and goes to the hotel for dinner. To get information, you need not only to get to the "correct" funeral - a person from the iron or gold caste, but also to find a guide who can on a good English language explain what happens when.
I arrived in Rantepao, the center of Tana Toraja, on the evening of the first day of the funeral of Ala’ Baan, 87, a policeman from the iron caste. The ceremony in the village of Kanuruan took four days, there were about five hundred guests, 24 buffalo were sacrificed - that's how much it takes to get permission for a wooden statue of the deceased - tau tau.
The body was not buried for six months - just how long it took the family to raise funds for the organization of the funeral. Previously, the procedure was carried out in two stages. 1-2 months after death, a small ceremony dialuk pia, a year later, when enough money has been collected, rante - a funeral in the burial field for the burial of noble people. The term can reach three years, but only for the noble. A person from the lower, wooden caste is buried in a week.
From the moment of physical death, a person is not considered dead, but only sick. They bring him food, cigarettes for men, betel nut for women. For the body to be stored for a long time, formalin injections are made. The body is stored in the south room of the traditional Toraja tongkonan house. To accommodate relatives and friends who came to pay tribute to the deceased, temporary houses are built.
On the first day of the funeral, the body is taken out of the house and carried through the village so that the residents can say goodbye to the deceased. This procedure is called ma'palao or ma'pasonglo. On this day, one buffalo is sacrificed. Then the coffin with the body is moved to a special la’kian building - it has two floors, at the top there is a place for the coffin and relatives, at the bottom there are tables for stewards who manage the process.
On the second day, everyone comes to say goodbye to the deceased. They gather in groups at the entrance to the village, bring gifts with them - rice, betel, bolok - vodka, pigs and, of course, buffaloes. Gifts are nominal, and you will have to thank them later. If another family brought a piglet to your family's funeral, then a piglet. If a buffalo, then a buffalo. The guide joked that so many things were brought to the funeral in his family that he could only hope that this year no one would die in the families of friends. Close relatives also bring gifts. Who can. One of the daughters of the deceased, a famous singer, brought back five buffaloes. But if a person cannot afford a buffalo, no one will reproach him. Previously, the inheritance was divided depending on the brought. And now, in fairness, who needs it more, because. there were other opportunities for the Toraja to make money. Later, the family will meet and decide what to do with the gifts. How many buffaloes will be sacrificed, how many will be sold to cover the cost of the funeral, how many will be left.
The most expensive buffalo is tied at the simbuang, a tree trunk dug into the ground. After the funeral is over, a megalith can be installed in this place.
Another buffalo is sacrificed and the visiting day is declared open.
The guests are led to ma'doloanni - the steward manager, dressed unlike everyone else, not in black, but in red and yellow striped pants and a shirt and a white shawl. He has a spear in one hand and a shield in the other. He jumps from foot to foot and shouts something like "yo-ho-ho" - thanks to the guests for coming to the funeral. Guests - in a column of two or one after another, first the oldest - follow him to langtang pa'pangnganan - the reception house, sit down there and wait for refreshments. At the door of langtang pa'pangnganan, they are met by the granddaughters of the deceased in traditional beaded funeral clothes.
The treat - rather an offering - consists of two parts. The deceased's family and volunteers first bring cigarettes and betel, and it is important that the oldest guests in the group receive the cigarettes and betel from the golden bowl of piring pangngan. A man gives cigarettes to a man, a woman gives betel to a woman. Then female assistants bring water in pengkokoan - glasses decorated with beads to rinse the mouth after betel (also for the oldest), as well as cookies, tea, coffee. In parallel, male pa'badong dancers wearing identical T-shirts that say "condolences to the family of the deceased" dance the traditional ma'badong dance and chant the biography of the deceased. Both men and women can dance, but men danced at this funeral, because. there were many guests and all the women helped in the kitchen.
And so the whole day. One group of guests, the second, the third. The last to arrive at the langtang pa'pangnganan were the women who worked in the kitchen, and the betel and food were brought to them by men dressed in women's clothes. This is not a tradition, more of a joke. The last dance is danced by members of the family of the deceased, expressing sadness that they are together for the last time, that in a few days they will not see him again. The family hopes that in paradise, the deceased will become a demigod and return to help them with their daily chores.
The meat of the sacrificed buffalo, as well as the meat of the sacrificed pigs, are cooked for dinner. The meat is finely cut, stuffed with bamboo trunks and cooked over a fire. The dish is called pa'piong. It is served with stewed beans, vegetables, rice, cookies. After dinner, entertainment is arranged - a buffalo fight. There is no time to cry and mourn on this day.
The third day - the day of the sacrifice of buffaloes and the day of the visit of the funeral by a Christian priest - officially all Toraj are Christians of different orientations. There are Catholics, there are Protestants, there are Adventists. The Protestant priest had to wait, about which many joked that, they say, an important person. A woman came, sang a hymn, read a prayer, collected money for the upkeep of the church and left. She also prayed for those who had to bury the deceased on the fourth day, so that they would become strong and be able to carry the coffin, located in a small traditional house on a stretcher, to the place of burial. The weight of the structure is about half a ton.
The Protestant Church does not forbid sacrifice. The main thing is that it should not be financially difficult for the family. There is a Pentakosta church in Rantepao, it teaches not to make sacrifices, but the church is not popular. Culture will die, and there will be no tourists, the guide said.
After the departure of the priest, ten buffaloes were brought to the place of sacrifice. In addition to the belief that their souls will go to heaven with the deceased, there is also a pragmatic moment in the sacrifice. Buffalo meat and pig meat are distributed to all people who helped organize the funeral, as they helped for free. The cost of one pig is from 100 to 400 dollars, the cost of a buffalo is from 1200 and more, buffaloes of a rare breed can cost half a million. Chickens are not sacrificed at the funeral ceremony, but at happy rambutuka (“rising smoke”) ceremonies - a wedding, a new home is a must. It is possible to eat chicken meat during the storage of the body and the funeral, but you need to buy it on the side.
On the fourth day, the relatives move the coffin with the body to the house grave. There are two designations in the Toraja language: the colloquial panane and the ceremonial banua tangmerambu, "house without smoke." During the transfer of the body, relatives may push each other to show who is stronger, to show their love and care for the deceased. They seem to be arguing where to bury him, in the house grave of the husband's or wife's family, although everything has long been decided.
Caring for the deceased does not stop even after burial. Despite Christianity, people believe in the old traditions. Food and gifts are brought to the grave. If they forgot to put something in the coffin, they may see in a dream that the deceased is asking for it. Then in mid-August, after the harvest, you can get permission from the tomina - the priest of the traditional religion, to open the coffin, change the deceased into new clothes and bring him the required. To do this, you need to sacrifice another buffalo or two or three pigs.
© report with photo

On Bali:

Classification of graves

Traditional burials are of the following types (in brackets are the names of settlements where this type can be seen):
1) Rocky - rock graves. In the rock (high, the higher - the better) a hole is hollowed out into which the coffin with the deceased is placed. The hole is then sealed.
They came up with this type of burial so that thieves (from among neighboring peoples) could not get to the jewelry that was previously placed in the coffin along with the corpse. (Lemo, Marante, Pana). Now jewelry is no longer placed, and holes can be hollowed out and not very high (the guys relaxed).

Tau-tau (tau-tau)
In some of the rock tombs, you can see "tau-tau" - figures carved from wood, symbolizing the dead. They stand on special “balconies” carved into the rock, like theater goers, and look at you with their white eyes.
Previously, they simply denoted the gender of a person. Now it has become fashionable to make statues with portrait resemblance, but they are put up on balconies less and less often - because of the risk of theft, tutya is kept at home. And their eyes are no longer white.
The old tau-tau look voodoo colorful and frightening, especially in all sorts of desert places.
Perhaps the tau-tau is the most colorful of the mortal sights of Toraja.
(Lemo, Marante, Kete Kesu, Londa)

2) Hanging coffins - hanging graves. The coffins were placed on wooden piles driven horizontally into the rock. high altitude- again, so that the "enemies" do not steal the values ​​​​put in the coffin. Over time, these piles (and coffins) rotted and collapsed down, so such places abound with the bones and skulls of poor Yoreks lying around. Caring Torajians often specially carefully lay out the skulls for viewing. When you first see all this scattered, it’s creepy, but on the second or third site you get used to it. (Kete Kesu, Marante)

3) Tombs in stones - stone graves - the principle is like that of rock graves, only the hole is hollowed out not in the rock, but in the stone, and not necessarily high - the stone can be no taller than human growth (Bori, Lokomata). Several holes are hollowed out in large stones. Interestingly, up to 20 members of the same family are buried in one grave, if there is space.

4) Cave burials - cave graves (Londa, Kete Kesu). Coffins are stored in caves in natural depressions. They try to put the coffin higher, but sometimes they just put it on top of each other, there this economy stands and slowly rots. Around the skull in abundance. By the way, there is no smell.

5) Another favorite topic of self-proclaimed guides and just local word-hunters:
Have you seen the baby graves? Oh, very nice!
Children's graves (baby graves) - if a child died before his teeth had time to erupt, he was buried in a hollow hollowed out in a tree and walled up. It was believed that the milky consistency of tree juices would nourish him and he would be able to "grow" in the next world. (Bori, Sanggalla)

In the picturesque mountainous region of South Sulawesi in Indonesia, an ethnic group called the Toraj live. These simple people who profess animism (the belief that all beings, including animals, plants and even inanimate objects or phenomena, have a spiritual essence) practice some of the strangest funeral rituals in the world. This includes the ritual of burying babies in trees, as well as the display of mummies of people who died a long time ago. The funeral rituals of the Toraja are an important social event that gathers numerous relatives. These events last for several days.

(Total 12 photos)

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1. When one of the Toraja dies, his relatives must hold a series of funeral ceremonies called Rambu Solok, which lasts for several days. But ceremonies do not take place immediately after death, because usually the Toraja family does not have enough funds to cover all the expenses for the funeral. As a result, they wait - weeks, months, and sometimes years, slowly collecting money. At this time, the deceased is not buried, but embalmed and kept in a house under the same roof with living relatives. Before the funeral, this person is not considered dead, everyone pretends that he is suffering from an illness.

2. When enough funds are collected, ceremonies begin during which buffaloes and pigs are slaughtered. The sacrifice is accompanied by dancing and music, and the young boys must catch the trickles of blood in long bamboo tubes. The more important the deceased, the more buffaloes are slaughtered. Often dozens of buffaloes and hundreds of pigs are sacrificed. After that, the meat is distributed to the guests who came to the funeral.

3. Then comes the burial ceremony itself, but people from the Toraji tribe are rarely buried in the ground. The dead are placed either in caves in a rocky mountain, or in wooden coffins that hang from the cliffs. A conventional burial is too expensive, and it takes several months to prepare everything. A wooden figurine of Tau-tau, which represents the deceased, is placed in a cave with a coffin. She is placed facing out of the cave. In the photo: graves carved into a rocky mountain and decorated with wooden idols Tau-tau.

4. Coffins are very beautifully decorated, but over time the wood begins to rot, and white bones often fall on the ground over which the coffin is suspended.

5. Children are not buried in caves, nor are they hung up from rocks. They are buried ... in the empty trunks of living trees. If the child dies before teething, it is wrapped in a cloth and placed in an empty place in the trunk of a growing tree, and then closed with a door made of palm fiber. After that, the hole is sealed. It is believed that when the tree begins to heal, it absorbs the child. There can be dozens of children in one tree. In the photo: a tree of children's graves in the village of Tana-Toraja.

6. The funeral is over, the guests have been fed and are returning home, but the rituals are not over yet. Every few years, in August, the Ma'Nene ritual takes place, during which the deceased is exhumed, washed, combed and dressed in everything new. These mummies are then driven around the village like zombies.

7. The unusual funeral rituals of Tana Toraji attract thousands of tourists and anthropologists every year.

8. Indeed, since 1984, Tana Toraju has been called the second most important tourist destination in Indonesia after Bali.

The Indonesian island of Sulawesi is inhabited by a group of related Toraji peoples. Translated from Bugi, this means "highlanders", since it is in the mountainous regions that the Toraja settlements are located. These people practice animism - a religious trend that regulates funeral rites that are terrible for a European. (website)

Toraji bury children in a very peculiar way

If a baby dies here, whose first teeth have not yet grown, relatives bury him in the trunk of a living tree. This people considers newborns to be special beings, immaculate and pure, who have barely broken away from mother nature and therefore must return to it ...

Initially, a hole of the required size and shape is hollowed out in the selected tree. It fits the baby's body. The resulting grave is closed with a special door made from palm fibers.

After about two years, the wood begins to "heal the wound" and it absorbs the body of the deceased crumbs. One big tree can be the last shelter for dozens of babies...

But this, as they say, is still flowers, and to be frank, such a burial of babies is not devoid of a certain meaning and sad harmony. The situation is different with the fate of all other Toraj.

Unburied corpses are just sick relatives

After the death of a person, his relatives perform a number of special rituals, but they do not always start this immediately. The reason lies in the poverty of the majority of the population, to which, however, they have long been accustomed and therefore do not try to improve their situation. However, until the relatives of the deceased collect the necessary amount (and a very impressive one), the funeral cannot take place. Sometimes they are postponed not only for weeks and months, but even for years ...

During all this time, "waiting for burial" is in the house where he lived before. After death, the Toraja embalm their dead to prevent the decay of the bodies. By the way, such dead - not buried and staying in the same house with the living - are considered not lifeless mummies, but simply sick people (?!)

But now the necessary amount has been collected, the ritual of sacrifice has been performed, ritual dances have been performed, and everything that is required for this occasion by the strict rules established by the ancestors of the Toraja many centuries ago. By the way, funerals in Sulawesi can last several days. Ancient legends say that before, after performing all the ritual procedures, the dead themselves went to their resting places ...

Toraji are carved into the rocks, on known altitude. True, again, not all, and if the family is very poor, she will simply hang a wooden coffin on a rock. Being near such a "graveyard", a European tourist can easily lose consciousness at the sight of someone's remains hanging from a rotten coffin or even falling to the ground ...

But that's not all. In August of each year, the restless Toraj take their relatives from the graves to wash them, put them in order, and put on new outfits. After that, the dead are carried through the entire settlement (which is very similar to the procession of zombies) and, having been laid in coffins, they are buried again. This unthinkable ritual for us is called "manene".

Return of lost corpses

The villages of the Toraja peoples were built on the basis of one family, almost each of them was one separate family. The villagers tried not to go far and keep to their "area", as they believed that the soul of a person after death should remain near the body for some time before heading to the "puya", that is, the haven of souls.

And for this you need to be near your loved ones, who will perform all the necessary rituals. If a person dies far from his native village, he may not be found. In this case, the soul of the unfortunate person will forever be stuck in his body.

However, Toraja has a way out in this case, although this ritual is very expensive and therefore not available to everyone. At the request of the relatives of the missing person, the village sorcerer summons the soul and the dead body back home. Hearing this call, the corpse rises and, staggering, begins to wander towards it.

People who noticed his approach run to warn of the return of the dead man. They do this not out of fear, but so that the corpse finds itself at home as soon as possible (nothing prevented it) and the rite was performed correctly. If someone touches the wandering corpse, it will again collapse to the ground. So those who run ahead warn about the procession of the dead man and that you should not touch him in any case ...

... You experience amazing feelings when you imagine such a picture. And the very attitude of these people to death causes by no means weak emotions. But, besides shudder, indignation and resolute rejection, will not an involuntary respect stir in the soul for those who managed to make death an integral, habitual part of everyday life and thereby conquered the eternal horror of man in front of her? ..