Ascetics, too, are buried rather than burnt, usually in an upright posture with the body surrounded with salt. Lepers and smallpox victims used to be buried in a recumbent position. Smallpox has been eradicated, and leprosy victims are usually cremated. If a Hindu “breaks caste” by becoming either a Muslim or a Christian, a death ceremony is conducted, the relatives bathe to purge their defilement, and the person’s name is never mentioned again. The concept of death clearly influences what is deemed appropriate death behaviour, as was argued earlier in this article. The fate of the soul
What happens between death and reincarnation is seldom discussed in articles about Hinduism. This is regrettable, for the perception of these events helps explain some of the rites of the religion and provides unique insights into the human preference, when thinking about death, to conceptualize metaphysical developments in very concrete terms.
Immediately after death, the soul is not clothed in a physical body but in a vaporous thumb-sized structure (linga ṡarīra). This is immediately seized by two servants of Yama, the god of death, who carry it to their master for a preliminary identity check. Afterward, the soul is promptly returned to the abode of the deceased, where it hovers around the doorstep. It is important that the cremation be completed by the time of the soul’s return, to prevent it from reentering the body. By the 10th day, the near relatives have purged some of the defilement (mṛitaka sutaka) they incurred from the death, and the chief mourner and a priest are ready to carry out the first śrāddha (ritual of respect). This is a step toward the reconstitution of a more substantial physical body (yatana ṡarīra) around the disembodied soul (preta) of the deceased. A tiny trench is dug in a ritually purified piece of land by a river, and the presence of Vishnu is invoked. Ten balls of barley flour mixed with sugar, honey, milk, curds, ghee, and sesame seeds are then placed, one by one, in the soil. As the first ball is offered, the priest says (and the son repeats after him), “May this create a head”; with the second ball, “May this create neck and shoulders”; with the third, “May this create heart and chest”; and so on. The 10th request is for the ball to create the capacity to digest, thereby satisfying the hunger and thirst of the newly created body. Bungled ceremonies can have catastrophic effects. Prayers are offered to Vishnu to help deliver the new entity (now perceived as some 18 inches [46 centimetres] long) into the power of Yama. The balls of barley are picked up from the trench and thrown into the river. Further śrāddhas are performed at prescribed times, varying according to caste; one of these rituals makes the soul an ancestral spirit, or pitṛi. With the completion of these rituals, the soul of the deceased leaves this world for its yearlong and perilous journey to Yama’s kingdom. The family is now formally cleansed. The men shave their heads, and the women wash their hair. The family’s tutelary god (removed by a friend at the time of the death) can be returned to its home. A feast is offered to Brahmans, neighbours, and beggars—even the local cows are given fresh grass. There is a sense of general relief: if the śrāddhas had not been performed, the preta could have become a bhūta (malignant spirit), repeatedly turning up to frighten the living. For the deceased, things would have been worse: the preta would have been left errant. (A similar fate befalls the soul of a person who commits suicide.) The horror of dying unshriven that haunted people in medieval Europe resembles the despair of the devout Hindu at the prospect of having no son to perform the śrāddhas.
The soul, in its substantial envelope, is meanwhile proceeding on its journey, holding onto a cow’s tail to cross the Vaitarani, a horrible river of blood and filth that marks the boundary of Yama’s kingdom. Throughout, it is sustained by further śrāddhas, during which friends on earth seek to provide it with shoes, umbrellas, clothing, and money. These they give to a Brahman, in the hope that the deceased will benefit. During such rituals relatives have to avoid all sewing, which might occlude the pitṛi’s throat, rendering it incapable of ever breathing or drinking again. After a year, the pitṛi in its yatana ṡarīra reaches Yama’s seat of judgment, where it is sentenced to a strictly limited term in heaven (svarga) or hell (naraka) according to its deserts. This completed, it moves into another body (the karaṇa ṡarīra), whose form depends on the individual’s karman. It could be a plant, a cockroach, a canine intestinal parasite, a mouse, or a human being. Unlike Jains, Hindus believe that whatever body the soul eventually moves into, it inhabits as sole tenant, not as a tenement lodger. Islām
Probably no religion deals in such graphic detail as does Islām with the creation, death, “life in the tomb,” and ultimate fate of humankind. Yet the Qurʿān, the holy book of Islām, itself provides no uniform or systematic approach to these problems. It is only in its later parts (which date from the period when the small Muslim community in Medina had come into contact with other religious influences) that problems such as the relation of sleep to death, the significance of breathing, and the question of when and how the soul leaves the body are addressed in any detail. Popular Muslim beliefs are based on still later traditions. These are recorded in the Kitāb al-rūḥ (“Book of the Soul”) written in the 14th century by the Ḥanbalī theologian Muḥammad ibn Abī-Bakr ibn Qayyīm al-Jawzīyah.
The basic premise of all Qurʿānic teaching concerning death is Allāh’s omnipotence: he creates human beings, determines their life span, and causes them to die. The Qurʿān states: “Some will die early, while others are made to live to a miserable old age, when all that they once knew they shall know no more (22:5; i.e., sūrah [chapter] 22, verse 5). Damnation and salvation are equally predetermined: “Allāh leaves to stray whom he willeth, and guideth whom he willeth” (35:8). As for those whom Allāh leaves astray, the Qurʿān states that “for them there will be no helpers” (30:29). Allāh has decided many will faiclass="underline" “If We had so willed We could certainly cause proper guidance to come to every soul, but true is My saying ‘assuredly I shall fill Jihannam’ ” (32:13).
In this perspective the individual’s fate (including the mode and time of death) appears inescapably predetermined. The very term Islām, Arabic for “surrender,” implies an absolute submission to the will of God. But what freedom does this allow those predestined to continue in the path of error, or to reject God’s will? And if there is no such freedom, what sense was there in the mission of the Prophet Muḥammad (Islām’s founder) and his appeal to people to alter their ways? It is hardly surprising that arguments about free will and predestination broke out soon after the Prophet’s death. The ensuing tensions dominated theological (and other) controversies within Islām during many centuries.
Questions concerning the meaning of life and the nature of the soul are dealt with patchily in both the Qurʿān and the Ḥadīth (the record of the sayings attributed to the Prophet). The Qurʿān records that, when asked about these matters by local leaders of the Jewish faith, the Prophet answered that “the spirit cometh by command of God” and that “only a little knowledge was communicated to man” (17:85). Humanity was created from “potter’s clay, from mud molded into shape” into which Allāh has “breathed his spirit” (15:28–29). A vital spirit or soul (nafs) is within each human being. It is associated, if not actually identified, with individuality and also with the seat of rational consciousness. It is interesting to speculate on the possible relation of the term nafs to such Arabic words as nafas (“breath”) and nafīs (“precious”), particularly in a language where there are no written vowels.