A complex Asian funeral rite...and death in Sri Lanka
C Gadiewasam. Death is a great leveller, they do say. Meaning that whether you are rich or poor, ugly or beautiful, good or nasty everyone gets to die at some point in their lives. Oddly enough that's just when people start being honestly religious, including the dying person invariably and their friends, relations and neighbors. Your author just recently got to know the extent of some religosity by analysing the amount of sheer drinking and serious gambling that goes on at latterday Sinhala "Buddhist" funerals in a more recent development of tradition, but that is just too unsavory to go into here even on this undead page. Instead we will just talk about bodies and spirits and dead things, as per custom with your friendly book-of-the-undead. In some countries in Asia would you believe it, water buffaloes really get the bad end of the deal, and depending on how rich the dying person was a lot of buffaloes get sacrificed, so as to help that person go to...