Sky burial

"bird-scattered"[1]) is a funeral practice in which a human corpse is placed on a mountaintop to decompose while exposed to the elements or to be eaten by scavenging animals, especially carrion birds like vultures and corvids.

Comparable excarnation practices are part of Zoroastrian burial rites where deceased are exposed to the elements and scavenger birds on stone structures called Dakhma.

The function of the sky burial is simply to dispose of the remains in as generous a way as possible (the origin of the practice's Tibetan name).

Additionally, subsurface interment is difficult since the active layer is not more than a few centimeters deep, with solid rock or permafrost underlying the surface.

[19] Mongolians traditionally buried their dead (sometimes with human or animal sacrifice for the wealthier chieftains), but the Tümed adopted sky burial following their conversion to Tibetan Buddhism under Altan Khan during the Ming dynasty.

[20] Sky burial was initially treated as a primitive superstition and sanitation concern by the Communist governments of both the PRC and Mongolia; both states closed many temples,[20] and the practice was banned during the Cultural Revolution,[4] as sky burials were considered among the Four Olds, the umbrella term used by Communists to describe "backwards" customs, cultures and ideas.

Sky burial nonetheless continued to be practiced in rural areas and has even received official protection in recent years.

Finally, Tibetan practice holds that the yak carrying the body to the charnel grounds should be set free, making the rite much more expensive than a service at a crematorium.

In 2010, a prominent Tibetan incarnate lama, Metrul Tendzin Gyatso, visited the sky burial site near the Larung Gar Buddhist Institute in Sertar County, Sichuan, and was dismayed by its poor condition.

With the stated goal of restoring dignity to the dead and creating a better environment for the vultures, the lama subsequently rebuilt and improved the platform where bodies are cut up, adding many statues and other carved features around it, and constructed a large parking lot for the convenience of visitors.

Prior to the procedure, monks may chant mantra around the body and burn juniper incense – although ceremonial activities often take place on the preceding day.

All the eyewitness accounts remarked on the fact that the rogyapas did not perform their task with gravity or ceremony, but rather talked and laughed as during any other type of physical labor.

While a Tokden has an important role in burial rites, they are often people of low social status and sometimes receive payment from the families of the deceased.

Then, when only the bones remain, these are broken up with mallets, ground with tsampa (barley flour with tea and yak butter, or milk) and given to the crows and hawks that have waited for the vultures to depart.

In one account, the leading rogyapa cut off the limbs and hacked the body to pieces, handing each part to his assistants, who used rocks to pound the flesh and bones together to a pulp, which they mixed with tsampa before the vultures were summoned to eat.