Where is grandfather dug up for the holiday?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The traditions of the peoples of the world, at times, can be confusing: someone files their teeth before the wedding, someone wears pants with a hole in their bottom, and someone digs up the bodies of deceased relatives every three years in order to be with the deceased again, to change their clothes and refresh.

The Manene Festival gathers on the island of Sulawesi not only distant relatives who left many years ago, but also hordes of tourists who are not confused by the "aromas" in the air and the terrible mummies extracted from the tombs … It is in order to marvel at the diversity of folk traditions that thousands of travelers come to Indonesia.

What is this event like? The Toraja people number almost one and a half million representatives on the island; it was they who introduced the strange custom of regular meetings with the dead about a century ago. For Toraja, this is not strange - this people has very strong beliefs that ancestral souls need to walk in the sunlight and see their descendants regularly.

Once every three years, the Manene rite or ritual is held to cleanse the bodies of ancestors. These days, the mummified remains of relatives are removed from the tombs, and regardless of the date of burial, even if a person left for another world quite recently, they will still be removed and beautified.

The bodies are put in order, paying special attention to the face, new clothes are prepared for the deceased to replace the decayed ones. In the dry and sunny Indonesian climate, bodies dry up and do not fall apart, as you might expect, but rather naturally mummify. That facilitates the task of retrieving them and further solemn transfer. On the deceased, they put on ceremonial clothes, decorate them with bijouterie, and they can even pick up an accessory in the form of sunglasses or a cap.

The dead are not buried in the ground, but kept in small grottoes carved into the stone. But small children, who have not yet developed teeth, are buried in the trunks of trees by Torajs and are not then taken out into the world.

It is noteworthy that the Toraja's death is very philosophical, but the funeral is considered the most important event in the family, and therefore they can collect money all their lives in order to go magnificently to the next world. It so happens that a family does not have enough funds to organize a decent funeral, then they can postpone it for a month, two, or even a year, until they collect the required amount.