Cremation Ground
is a place where people go to die.
It is literally a location where corpses are burned, but it also has a major symbolic significance in Hindu culture.
The cremation site is associated with death and impurity (ashaucha), making it a very unfavorable location that is often said to be haunted by evil wandering ghosts.
The cremation site is typically situated on the outside of a community, both to avoid any interaction with this source of inauspiciousness in daily life and perhaps to symbolically reject the fact of death by relegating the cremation ground to the “unsettled” world.
One well-known exception to this norm is the cremation site at Manikarnika Ghat in Benares, which is located in the heart of the city.
Because Benares is also the abode of the deity Shiva, its prominence symbolically compels the people to face the reality of death, but it also increases the hope that death will offer ultimate soul freedom (moksha).
Similarly, although most people avoid the cremation site because it is considered unlucky, certain religious adepts select it as their location of living and religious practice on their own will.
This may include ascetics who are merely imitating frightening Shiva figures that are believed to live on cremation sites.
Tantra practitioners may dwell on a cremation site to proclaim the fundamental unity of all reality and transcend the false ideas of purity and impurity.
Also see cremation.
