The migrations of early culture: A study of the significance of the geographical distribution of the practice of mummification as evidence of the migrations of peoples and the spread of certain customs and beliefsSmith, Grafton Elliot
History
The migrations of early culture: A study of the significance of the geographical distribution of the practice of mummification as evidence of the migrations of peoples and the spread of certain customs and beliefs
Smith, Grafton Elliot
Ethnology; Human beings -- Migrations; Mummies
“The entrails of the deceased (who had been dead upwards of a month) had
been taken out a few hours after death by means of an incision in the
stomach, and the vacuum being filled with honey and spices the opening
was sewed up. The whole body was then covered over with a slight coating
of resinous substance called _dhamma_, and wax, to preserve it from the
air, after which it was richly overlaid with gold leaf, thus giving the
body the appearance of one of the finely moulded images so common in the
temples of the worshippers of BOODH.”
Then it was cremated.
This is a curious instance of the blending of the custom of mummification
with the later practice of cremation, which was inspired by entirely
different ideals. Throughout the whole area in which Egyptian methods
of embalming were adopted there are found numerous instances of such
syncretism with a variety of burial customs.
“Another method which I have known to be practised, but not as common as
the one above detailed, of embalming bodies in the Burman country, is by
forcing two hollow bamboos through the soles of the feet, up the legs and
into the body of the deceased; then by dint of pressing and squeezing the
fluid is carried off through the bamboos into the ground.”
This practice is an important link between the Egyptian and the
Indonesian methods.
In his article on Thibetan burial customs (=32=, p. 511), Waddell
informs us that preservation of the entire body by embalming seems to
be restricted to the sovereign Grand Lamas of Lhāsa and Tāshilhumpo.
“The body is embalmed by salting, and, clad in the robes of the deceased
and surrounded by his personal implements of worship, is placed, in the
attitude of a seated Buddha, within a gilded copper sarcophagus in one of
the rooms of the palace: it is then worshipped as a divinity.”
There are many points of interest in this practice, which, considered in
conjunction with the methods practised in Burma, Ceylon and Persia just
mentioned, clearly indicate not only the sources and the routes taken by
this knowledge of embalming in its spread from Egypt, but also how the
burial rites of a variety of peoples can become intimately blended and
intermingled one with another.
In Captain T. H. Lewins’ book on “The Wild Tribes of South-Eastern India”
(London, 1870, p. 274) I find the following statement:—“Among the Dhun
and Khorn clans the body is placed in a coffin made of a hollow tree
trunk, with holes in the bottom. This is placed on a lofty platform and
left to dry in the sun. The dried body is afterwards rammed into an
earthern vase and buried; the head is cut off and preserved. Another clan
sheathe their dead in pith; the corpse is then placed on a platform,
under which a slow fire is kept up until the body is dried. The corpse
is then kept for six months ... it is then buried. The Howlong clan hang
the body up to the house-beams for seven days, during which time the dead
man’s wife has to sit underneath spinning.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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