The Relationship Of Tibetan Funeral Custom And Religion

Funeral custom stems from kinds of action and thinking way of people's treatment of corpse, it is a way for dead one farewell. There are multitudinous methods of funeral customs between different nations in the world. Due to various environments, cultural activities and religion, so there are different funeral senses, ceremonies and customs in the disparate nations and areas. The funeral custom dates back to the ideas and attitudes of soul, then it comes to diverse funeral customs with the development of social and systematic religions and others factors. Take Huangnan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Qinghai province for example, it is located in the Tibetan culture circle of Amdo areas where's dominant religion is Tibetan Buddhism and Bon, but the funeral custom in the area as an important explanation way to life and death, which is influenced by Tibetan Buddhism and has multivariate methods, even there are different processes and ceremonies, as according to identity and death reason, there are celestial burial, cremation, burial in the ground, water burial, etc.This paper is based on the field investigations in Huangnan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Qinghai province and combined with some theories on historical philology, ethnology, anthropology, sociology of religion serve as supplementary to study the relationship of funeral custom and religion of Tibetan people in this area. The first part of paper introduces the human style, features and belief in Huangnan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture briefly; the second describe the funeral ceremony and processes detailedly including customs, taboos and the like, so express the characteristics of funeral custom there; the third studies bardo deliverance of Tibetan Buddhism to reflect its importance and relationship between funeral custom and religion; the last part of paper discusses the social function of funeral custom of Buddhism.