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Funeral Beliefs

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Funeral rites refers to the complex of customs, beliefs and practices marking the death of a person which evolves out of the culture complex and are usually undertaken to revere and honor the dead in particular and to venerate the reality of death in general. Since ancient times funeral rites have been a reflection of the religio-cultural system with each such system having characterized itself with defined funeral rites , well differentiated from the other. Taking this as the building point we can identify and differentiate various funeral rites as per the cultural complex out of which they grows and sustains. These correspond to major religio-cultural system of the world viz. Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, …show more content…
The practices that are followed and the customs accompanying these practices differentiates various funeral rites from each other with each one reflecting the traits of specific cultural beliefs and values. To clarify, on one hand Hinduism which strongly believes in the concept of reincarnation views death as the soul moving from one body to the next on its path to attain Nirvana and therefore Hindus practice cremating the dead as Fire liberates the soul on that path, on the other hand Cultural practice in religion like Zoroastrianism views death as the most polluting and impure and therefore profess to keep aloof sacred elements of nature like Fire, Earth, Water etc from the dead lest it would make them impure and thus it profess that dead should remain in the open to be consumed by vultures and crows, which were created by the God for the specific purpose. Further differing from all this, cultural practice in religion like Christianity profess for burial of the dead as it believes that a Christian should have a physical resurrection as and when the Judgment day arrives and thus the physical body should remain as there would be no resurrection in the absence of physical body and therefore burial is opted in place of

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