Ancient Ceremony Walking with Dead and Cleaning Corpses of Toraja Indonesia

When our loved one dies everyone know that we will not get any chance to see them again in life but people from Toraja south Sulawesi Indonesia get many chances to see their deceased again. They perform ritual known as Ma’nene or The Ceremony of Cleaning Corpses.

In month of august of every year People of Torajas return to burial caves and remove the dead bodies and change their clothes and repair coffins .They groom dead bodies and give them a bath as well. After performing all this they hold dead body upright and walk with them from village to their place of death and put the body back into coffins and returned to cave for next year when all this process will be repeated.

Walking with dead

According to the ancient Torajan faith the soul of dead person must return to his village of origin. Because of this, people afraid of journey far because if person died on a journey while they were away from village then they are unable to return.

In rare case if a person died on a journey then the family would go to the place of death and assist the dead person back home by walking them back to the village.

During the ritual hundreds of relative gather at ceremonial site and express their grief with singing or chanting or by playing of music.

Cleaning Corpses of Toraja Indonesia

If dead person was wealthy and have special social status then family member of deceased sacrifice buffalo and pigs with water for him.

Torajan people believe in life after death and they assume for taking new birth soul has to complete a long journey after death. For completing journey faster they require more animal.

According to Toraja burial method coffin may be laid in a cave or hung on a cliff. Wealthy people of Toraja buried in a stone grave carved out of a rocky cliff.

Every religion has its own method of dealing with death and deceased and Toraja burial rituals are one of them that make it a tourist attraction in the world.

Ancient Ceremony Walking with Dead