Cremation.
Cremation is the preferred form of disposition for most Hindus, but burials may occur in specific situations and subcommunities.
The corpse is typically burned on the day of death, usually within a few hours after death.
Although this might be seen as a sanitary precaution in a hot environment, the religious motivations for many Hindus are much more strong.
To begin with, a corpse is seen to be a source of violent impurity (ashaucha), which is eliminated by burning the body.
The removal of a possible vehicle for wandering spirits, who, according to popular belief, may reanimate a body, is a second rationale for rapid cremation.
Immediately after death, the rituals leading to cremation commence.
There is considerable variety in these ceremonies, as there is in many Hindu rituals, across various areas and groups, but the following description provides a broad image of them, at least in northern India: The corpse is washed, placed on a bier (typically constructed of bamboo, which is inexpensive, robust, and easily accessible), and clothed (white for a man or a widow, a colored sari for a married woman).
Many people bind their big toes together with a thread in the hopes of preventing an alien spirit from reanimating the body.
The mourners sing the customary lament Ram Nam Satya Hai, Satya Boli Gati Hai (“God's name is Truth, Truth uttered is Passage”) as they bring the bier to the cremation site.
The mourners would often stop along the route, not just to relax but also in case the dead was simply asleep.
The body is washed again and placed on a pyre when they get to the cremation site (which is typically near a river or other source of water).
The main mourner (traditionally the oldest son) rounds the fire, pouring water from a broken clay pot.
Because poetic imagery often relate the transitory nature of human bodies to that of clay pots, this activity plainly denotes the body's ultimate annihilation.
After that, the principal mourner lights the fire and stays there until the corpse burns.
If the heat of the fire does not shatter the skull, he is handed a long bamboo staff to puncture it.
This is said to unleash the deceased's vital winds (prana), which have accumulated in the brain.
The principal mourner's last task is to take the bones and ash from the pyre (asthi-sanchayana), usually the next day, and immerse them in the Ganges or another holy river (asthi-visarjana).
Despite the introduction of more efficient and less expensive electric crematoria, the hardwood pyre remains the conventional method of cremation.
In contemporary India, this has resulted in a unique ecological issue, especially in the major cities.
Many impoverished people cannot afford to purchase enough wood to burn the corpse on a pyre, yet many refuse to utilize electric crematoria because of tradition.
They will conduct incomplete cremations, which will leave a portion of the corpse unburned.
This is a terrible situation, both religiously and in terms of public health, since the corpses constitute a source of religious impurity and contribute to river pollution.
See Pandurang Vaman Kane (trans. ), A History of Dharmasastra, 1968, and Raj Bali Pandey, Hindu Samskaras, 1969, for further details.
See Lawrence Babb's The Divine Hierarchy, 1975, and Ann Grodzins Gold's Fruitful Journeys, 1988, for descriptions of contemporary practice.