What is the funeral culture in China and how is it formed?

Birth, old age, illness and death are the necessary stages of life. Death can be regarded as the last journey of life, but it is not the end of everything, because future generations will deal with his body-funeral. Funeral industry has a long history. Archaeological data show that Neanderthals, the creator of Moster culture, had the custom of burying the dead about 10-40000 years ago in the middle Paleolithic period in Europe, and had certain burial methods. About 1800 years ago, there was a funeral custom for cavemen in China in the late Paleolithic period. There was a cemetery on one side of the cave of Neanderthals, and three skeletons were found. The deceased had some stone beads, drill bones, bone pendant ornaments and flint tools. Red powder containing hematite is scattered around the cave ruins. In ancient times, the formation or choice of tombs was often closely related to people's living environment. Tree burial or wind burial are mostly ethnic groups living in the Woods; For example, in ancient China, the Khitans hanged their bodies on trees and burned their bones three years later. People who live in the water, such as those who died abnormally in Dulong Village, throw their bodies into the river and let them wander; Tsutsutsugamushi patients in northwest China, because they live in cold areas, fire is particularly important to their lives, which affects the funeral and cremation is also very popular.

The above text is intended as an introduction. The following will be divided into "Funeral Law" and "Etiquette" to briefly describe the funeral industry in China.

First, the burial method

1. Funeral

In ancient times, Huns and Turks, except Han nationality, were mostly buried in the earth, usually with coffins. The coffins of the nobles in the Han dynasty weighed several times, and the outer layer was called "coffin" and the inner layer was called "coffin", which was very beautifully made. Rich people will carve beautiful animal images on coffins. The graves of ordinary people are simple. After they choose an auspicious land, they dig graves there to bury the dead, and then pile them into cones or mounds. People of the same family are buried in an area, forming a cemetery, commonly known as ancestral graves. Each tomb is sorted according to the size of family generation, so that future generations can clearly distinguish which tomb belongs to which generation. People regard being buried in ancestral graves after death as a courtesy, which is one of the minimum conditions for being a man. Because many people can't go to their ancestral graves, such as actresses, prostitutes, people who died suddenly, people with chronic diseases, unmarried people, people who died in a foreign land, generally can't go back to their hometown for burial. Even if the body is transported all the way back, it can only be buried directly outside the village. The so-called "wild ghosts don't see their home gods."

Yellow was advocated in the Han Dynasty, and all emperors used yellow as the color of dignitaries. Yellow is actually khaki. Among the five elements of yin and yang, soil is the most stable and reliable foundation. Therefore, burying people with soil after death is considered to be the best way to let the soul rest in peace. Burial burial conforms to the living customs of the Han people and the traditional concept of "where there is land, there is life, and where there is no land, there is death", so burial has been the main burial method of the Han people for thousands of years.

2. Cremation

Cremation is the oldest funeral custom in China, which has the greatest influence on today's society. As early as the Neolithic Age, cremation appeared in China. At the beginning of cremation, it was first popular among some nomadic people and recorded in the pre-Qin period. "Mozi Festival Funeral" says: "There is a canal country in the west of Qin Dynasty. Their relatives are dead, and they will burn it when they collect firewood. You will become a dutiful son on the way. " Liezi Yang Zhu also recorded the words of Man Zhong Ping: "If you die, you can burn it." At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Buddhism was also introduced to China, and the history of cremation of Buddhists and ordinary Han people can be traced back to the Five Dynasties, Song and Yuan Dynasties. "Book of Rites XXIII" says: There are so-called cremators now ... There are many people on the east side of the river, who have been burned and abandoned despite losing their loved ones. There are "human pavilions" in many places. The Great Sheng Yuan Guo Zhengxiang Zhang Dian records the death of parents of Beijing passers-by, who often put them on firewood and set them on fire. Cremation in this period is usually related to poor families, no money or no land to bury. Some died in a foreign land, and it is difficult to help the bodies return to China for cremation. Have a plenty of died in battle, military emergency, burning eyebrows. In the folk, some people who died of infectious diseases are also cremated. At this time, the cremation of the Han nationality was also disturbed by Confucianism. Zhao Kuangyin, the ancestor of the Song Dynasty, and Zhao Gou, the emperor of the Southern Song Dynasty, both banned cremation.

3. cliff burial

Cliff burial, also known as hanging coffin burial, is a special burial custom of Puyue people who lived widely in the south of China in ancient times, and is regarded as a great miracle in the history of world globalization. The burial method is to hang the coffin on the mouth wall by using natural stone crevices or artificial wooden stakes, or put the coffin into natural or artificial caves. The burial place for hanging coffins was chosen on the cliff and high rock near the river. Most of the burial tools are boat coffins, which are 2-3 meters long and about half a meter wide. Shaped like a ship, it is divided into three parts: head and tail, and the warehouse is the coffin pivot for placing the body.

In a broad sense, hanging burial refers to a burial structure with local characteristics, in which holes are drilled on stone cliffs as burial chambers. This kind of cliff tomb in the Warring States period was found in the cliff cave of the Three Gorges in Sichuan. At this stage, the cliff tomb is higher than the ground, ranging from two or three meters low to one or twenty meters high. Some are built on gentle slopes, while others are built on cliffs. Tombs are divided into single-chamber tombs, two-chamber couple tombs and multi-chamber family tombs. Usually, there are various patterns engraved on the cliffs inside and outside the tomb, and some are also engraved with inscriptions, the surname of the deceased and some auspicious words.

4. Celestial burial

Celestial burial is a very special burial method adopted by Tibetan people on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. There is a special site for celestial burial, where the terrain is flat and open, and there must be a flat stone in the center. The family of the funeral carried the dead here, far away. There is a special owner in the celestial burial place. He first tied the body to a stone with a rope, and then raised an extremely sharp knife to cut the body open, leaving flesh and internal organs. Bones are divided into piles, usually divided into eight large pieces. Bones (including skulls) must be crushed with stones and mixed with some ghee. After the work was finished, the celestial burial master surrounded the stones, lit piles of firewood and sprinkled ghee on the fire. At this time, the whole celestial burial ground was filled with smoke, and the flavor of ghee drifted everywhere. Soon, a large number of vultures came from all directions. Anxious to hold the fire, leisurely spread huge wings hovering in the air. When the celestial burial master estimated that these celestial burial messengers were enough to solve the problem at one time, he raised his arms and shouted to heaven! Hey! "Make a phone call quietly. Before the celestial burial master retired from the cemetery, hundreds of vultures jumped on the bodies from the sky and underground. The whole cemetery is in a fight, and smoke fills the air. The sound of pecking and swallowing is suffocating. Half an hour later, the celestial burial ground left a few strands of blood, leaving the field empty. Tibetans think it's unlucky for the dead not to eat the bodies clean, so they always wait until the vultures are hungry to ascend to heaven. Undertaker witnessed this scene in the distance, and his heart was calm and peaceful. They think that the dead man has been taken to the blue sky by vultures, and his soul has returned to the Buddha safely. They returned home with peace of mind, and no one sobbed and wailed along the way (foreigners and Tibetan women were forbidden to participate in the celestial burial).

5. Second burial

The second burial is the second or more disposal of the remains after burial, cremation and wind burial. The Han and Zhuang nationalities in Taiwan Province, Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi and other places in the south of China have been popular since ancient times. People are buried in coffins after death. When the corpse decays three to five years later, choose an auspicious day, open the coffin, collect the bones, rub them and dry them. Then put the neck, chest, waist and lower limbs into a special pottery urn in turn. Commonly known as "Golden Pagoda". This second burial, also called the second bone washing burial or the second bone picking burial, is still preserved in women's villages in Fujian, Guangdong and Guangxi. 6. Modern funeral customs

After liberation, in order to save land and prevent the spread of diseases, the state stipulated that cremation should be carried out except for some ethnic minorities. After death, people were sent to funeral homes for parking, and the bodies were exposed and frozen. In order to prolong the preservation time, the undertaker will make a hole in the foot of the deceased to let all the blood of the deceased flow away.

After the body is sent to the funeral home, the funeral is usually held within three days. The funeral is divided into two parts: farewell ceremony and memorial service. A "mourning hall" was set up at the farewell ceremony of the body. The mourning hall was surrounded by wreaths with elegiac couplets of relatives and friends hanging on it. At the beginning of the farewell ceremony, funeral music was played. The mourners observed a three-minute silence, then bowed to the dead three times, and finally bypassed the body to pay tribute to the dead body. The eldest son took the photo of the deceased and led the mourners to the small auditorium to attend the memorial service. The memorial service was mainly to commend the achievements of the deceased before his death, but it was basically cancelled because it was too formal and wasted people and money. Generally speaking, photos are not colored, and "charcoal-fired porcelain phase" is used to indicate their permanence.

After the funeral, the "hearse"-now known as the "special car", transported the remains to the crematorium-commonly known as the "big chimney", and the remains were burned to ashes by fire. Relatives can keep the ashes in an urn according to the situation, or scatter them in the sea to plant trees.

Second, etiquette articles

The funeral customs of Han people are complicated. Here are just a few examples for readers' reference.

1. Carefully pursue leap years.

In leap year and leap month, "chasing Yuan cautiously" has been a great event since ancient times. Its main practice is to make shroud and longevity materials for the elderly in leap years and leap months, and take them in the rest of leap years to increase happiness and longevity.

There are many customs and taboos about shroud (also called mourning clothes and old clothes). The material of the shroud is usually cotton or silk. Not if there are foreign characters. Because "foreign" and "yang" are homophonic, the shroud should be worn to the underworld, so it is unnecessary. Satin is not used to make shroud, because satin is homophonic with "Duan Zi", which means to avoid losing children and grandchildren. Shrouds cannot be made of leather or wool, otherwise, the dead will be reincarnated as beasts in the afterlife. Shrouds are generally unbuttoned, and both underwear and coats are sewn with raw materials. It is said that there is no need to have a knot in one's heart (ancient clothes buttons are made of cloth or cloth), and there are successors. As for the number of shrouds, it is generally odd, three to five, seven to nine, and even numbers are forbidden, for fear of death coming again.

As for longevity materials (coffins), coffins include pottery, wood, stone, gold and copper. After the Spring and Autumn Period, wood was the main material. Han people still use pine and cypress as a symbol of longevity. Willow is generally not used, because willow does not bear seeds and is afraid of extinction.

2. Funeral ceremony

The whole ceremony includes bathing the dying person, putting on the shroud, moving to the coffin bed, sending him to the end, and buying water and rice. The so-called buying water is because people often buy human washing water, commonly known as "buying water". "Buying water" is embodied by putting money into water, that is, turning "yang water" into "yin water". The money used to buy water is mainly yin money, burning incense and paper, which is paper money.

Rice includes rice shells, jade shells and rice in the mouth of the deceased, which means putting pearls and jade in the mouth of the deceased. Zhengren held a "meal containing" to prevent the deceased from going to the underworld with an empty mouth and an empty stomach and becoming a hungry ghost. In ancient times, there were strict restrictions on the grade of rice. In the Ming Dynasty, it was stipulated that the rice above Grade 5 contained pearls, the rice above Grade 9 contained pearls, and the rice in Shu Ren contained money.

3. Pima Dai Xiao

Pima Dai Xiao, commonly known as wearing mourning clothes, is the so-called "clothing". In ancient times, there was a funeral in the family, and all family members followed the old ceremony according to their relationship with the deceased.

Generally speaking, both men and women wear thick white robes, commonly known as "filial piety". Children's filial piety is called "Pima Dai Xiao" because they don't sew their buttocks or tie hemp rope around their waist. Only the son-in-law is wearing a rag gown, not a hat. Most Han people wear filial hats with small copper coins and cotton balls nailed to them. One for the eldest son, two for the second son, three for the third son, and so on. Grandsons nailed red cotton balls on filial hats, one for the eldest grandson, two for the second grandson, and so on. Great-grandchildren put pink cotton balls on their filial sons' hats. Both men and women will cover blue cloth shoes with white cloth. If your parents are dead, you can be stricter. If one parent is alive, you can't be strict, revealing black heels, and grandchildren will wear red heels.

Start arguing

To raise the bar is to tie the coffin and lift it. Use a small pole when you leave the hall, and replace it with a big pole when you carry it to the street. Poor households have always been small bars. As for the types of bars, Royal Bar has 65,438+020 bar waiters, 64 bar waiters, 48 bar waiters, 32 bar waiters, 24 bar waiters, 65,438+06 bar waiters, 8 bar waiters and even 4 bar waiters and 2 bar waiters. "Miscellanies of the ruling and opposition since Daoxian County" said that before the Qing Dynasty, the royal family, monarchs and Baylor used 80 strokes, the first-class officials used 64 strokes, the second-class officials used 48 strokes, and the third-class officials used 32 strokes ... It can be seen that the poles were also used according to the official level.

When a rich family goes to a funeral, it is changed into the last big bar, and the big cover is officially raised. Poor households don't change poles or covers. During the war, rich people burned "ghost houses" (paper houses), and ordinary people only burned a sheet pile. At this time, most people even incinerate Linghua and the remaining "dead incense". The pillow used before death should be taken apart, and the buckwheat husk inside should be poured out. Together with the pillowcase, it should be placed in the street outside the door and burned by people who stayed at home (people who didn't attend the funeral).

At the same time, the eldest son kneeling in front of the coffin will also throw the basin. This basin is a pottery basin with a hole in the bottom. When falling, the father died and fell with his left hand, and the mother died and fell with her hand. If it doesn't break, avoid falling twice. If the son is too young, he needs the help of an adult to complete the action.

In many places of the Han nationality, the filial sons on the hillsides still hold a "funeral stick" (some places in the south are called "filial stick" and some places are called "funeral stick"), and the funeral stick is mostly a piece of wood, which can be wrapped in white paper. It is said that the source of mourning is that filial sons are generally very sad, and some will be exhausted because of this, so they use crutches to help them walk. Later, Dashan found that crutches were enough to show the depth of grief, so he formed a rule that every dutiful son should lean on a crutch, which is a crying stick.