L18: Customs of Death

Good morning, everyone. Come in, please sit down. I hope you all managed to do your interviews with the older women in your families. If you did, you will find today's lecture very relevant — because we are going to be talking about rituals that touch the deepest human experiences. Today is Lecture 18: Customs of Death. I want to say something before we begin. This is a topic that some of you may find emotionally close. If any of you have recently experienced a bereavement, please know that we approach this topic with respect and care. Death rituals are not morbid curiosities — they are among the most beautiful and most meaning-laden practices in any culture. They are the ways communities hold themselves together in the face of the most destabilising experience there is. I think you will find that studying Goan death customs reveals something very profound about Goan values — about family, community, memory, and continuity. Quick recap. Last week in Lecture 17, we looked at the Customs of Birth — the rituals marking the entry of a new life into the Goan community. Today we complete the life-cycle arc by looking at the rituals that mark departure from it. [0–10 minutes: Introduction] The anthropologist Arnold van Gennep described all life-cycle rituals as rites of passage — ceremonies that move a person from one social status to another. Birth, coming of age, marriage, death — these are the great transitions, and every culture develops elaborate rituals to manage them. Death is the most disorienting of all transitions, because it removes a person from the community entirely. The function of death rituals is therefore to manage that removal — to give it meaning, to integrate the loss into the community's understanding of itself, and to ensure the proper passage of the soul into whatever comes next. Goan death customs are shaped by three overlapping frameworks: the very old South Asian Hindu framework of ritual purity, ancestral propitiation, and the cycle of rebirth; the Catholic Christian framework of sacramental death, resurrection, and eternal life; and specific local Goan practices that do not fit neatly into either framework — local protective customs, folk beliefs, community obligations — that persist across religious lines. [10–40 minutes: Core Content] Let me walk through the arc of Goan death customs, beginning with the moment of death and moving through the post-death period. In traditional Goan Hindu practice, the moment of death is a ritual moment. When death is anticipated — as in the case of an elderly person or a seriously ill person — the family gathers around the dying person. Sacred texts may be read or chanted. Water from the Ganga, or sacred tulsi leaves, may be placed in or near the mouth of the dying person. The aim is to ensure that the dying person's consciousness is attuned to the divine as they pass. If possible, the person is lowered from the bed to the floor — earth to earth — as the final transition approaches. This is a very widespread Hindu practice across India that persists in Goa. At the moment of death, the ritual impurity — sutak — begins again, as at birth. The body must not be left alone. Women of the family, and often of the neighbourhood, gather immediately. There is weeping — not repressed or controlled — but open, communal grief. In many Goan communities, there are women who are specifically associated with leading the mourning — their loud, rhythmic keening is a form of musical grief that gives structure to the communal expression of loss. The body is washed and prepared for cremation. In Hindu Goan practice, cremation — daakhan — is the norm. The body is wrapped in a white cloth. In some communities, the face is covered with a cloth on which a small image of a deity has been drawn. The feet are pointed south — toward the realm of Yama, the god of death. The men of the family and community carry the bier to the cremation ground. The cremation — the antyesti, the last rites — is performed by the chief mourner, typically the eldest son. The lighting of the funeral pyre is one of the most significant ritual acts in Hindu life. In Goa, as throughout the Hindu world, it is the son's religious duty to light his parent's funeral pyre and thereby ensure their proper passage to the next world. This is one of the reasons — historically — why the birth of a son was so culturally valued. Without a son, who would light your pyre? After cremation, the ashes are collected and immersed in a river or the sea. The Mandovi river is a traditional site for this immersion in Goa. The immersion ritual — asthi visarjan — completes the physical dissolution and returns the material of the body to the natural world. The mourning period — the sutak after death — lasts for varying periods depending on community and caste. During this period, the family observes various prohibitions: no cooking of full meals in the house, no celebrations, no attendance at auspicious events like weddings. Food is brought to the mourning family by neighbours and relatives — this is the community taking care of the bereaved. It is a beautiful custom that ensures the grieving family does not have to perform domestic labour while they mourn. On the thirteenth day after death — tirvo or teravin — there is the concluding mourning ceremony. The pandit performs rituals, offerings are made to the deceased's soul, a feast is held — not a celebratory feast but a ritual feast at which the soul is believed to be present. Family members from distant places gather. The photograph of the deceased is placed on the altar with garlands and lamps. The thirteenth-day ceremony formally concludes the acute mourning period, though the annual death anniversary — tithi — is observed every year with prayers and offerings of food. Annual memorial rituals are important. Pitru Paksha — the fortnight of the ancestors in the Hindu calendar, usually falling in September-October — is a period when rituals for the dead are performed. Offerings of water, sesame seeds, and food are made to the spirits of ancestors. In Goa, this tradition is maintained in many Hindu families. Now let me turn to Goan Catholic death customs. These have their own distinct architecture, shaped by centuries of Catholic practice but deeply inflected by local Goan tradition. In a Catholic Goan household, when death approaches, the family calls the priest to administer the Last Rites — the Anointing of the Sick, formerly called Extreme Unction. This sacrament is the Catholic equivalent of the Hindu rituals at the deathbed — it prepares the soul for the final passage, confesses and absolves sins, and commends the dying person to God's mercy. The priest arrives, the family gathers, the prayers are said in Portuguese or Konkani or both. The presence of the priest is essential — it gives the death its spiritual legitimacy. After death, the body is laid out in the best room of the house — often the sala, the formal reception room — in the coffin. This is the velorio — the wake. The velorio is a communal event. Neighbours, relatives, members of the village sodality and church committee come to the house throughout the night. They pray the rosary, they sit with the family, they talk and remember the deceased. There is food and drink — this is a Goan wake, after all. In traditional Salcete Catholic culture, the velorio could be a substantial social event, with people coming from distant villages to pay their respects. The funeral Mass at the village church is the central ritual. The coffin is carried from the house to the church — traditionally on the shoulders of male relatives and friends. The church bells toll. The Mass for the Dead — the Missa de Requiem — is sung. The priest delivers the homily. The congregation prays. The coffin is then taken to the village cemetery — always located near or within the church grounds in Goan Catholic villages — for burial. The burial — unlike Hindu cremation — is a permanent interment. The grave becomes a physical monument, a location that can be visited, maintained, decorated with flowers on All Souls' Day. The Catholic concept of the body's resurrection means that the physical remains have a sacredness that cremation would violate — though today, the Catholic Church does permit cremation and Goan Catholic families increasingly choose it for practical reasons. The seventh day, the thirtieth day, and the anniversary of death — ano — are marked by Masses in the church and family gatherings. The pae de alma — the soul food — is a specific tradition in some Goan Catholic communities where special sweet breads or foods are distributed to the poor or to neighbours in memory of the deceased. The name literally means 'bread of the soul' — pao da alma in Portuguese. It is a beautiful practice that connects the deceased with an act of charity. Now, what is fascinating — and what our study of syncretism has prepared us for — is that Hindu and Catholic Goan communities share certain practices that do not belong neatly to either tradition. The practice of leaving food and water near the body or the grave for the spirit of the deceased is found in both communities, though it is theologically at odds with strict Catholic doctrine. The belief in the protective presence of ancestors — that the recently dead can bring harm or blessing to the living — persists in both communities. In some Goan Catholic villages, there are healing rituals called bhagat that involve propitiation of spirits, including the spirits of the recently dead who are believed to be causing illness. These are clearly pre-Christian in origin but they have persisted within Catholic communities because they address anxieties that formal Christian theology does not fully manage. The shared cemetery culture — the elaborately decorated graves of All Souls' Day, the candles lit at night, the families gathering to clean and adorn the graves — this is both specifically Catholic and specifically Goan. The graves of old Goan Catholic cemeteries are extraordinary things — carved crosses, painted tiles, photographs of the deceased embedded in stone, inscriptions in Portuguese. They are small monuments to individual lives, and collectively they are archives of Goan Catholic social history. [40–55 minutes: Activity and Discussion] Let me open up the floor. How many of you have attended a Hindu death ceremony — a teravin or an asthi visarjan? And how many have attended a Catholic funeral — a velorio or a funeral Mass? I want to see the hands. [Allow hands] Good — most of you have experienced at least one of these, some of you both. That lived experience is your primary source material here. So let me ask you this: in the death customs we have described today — both Hindu and Catholic — what is the common thread? What are these rituals really doing, regardless of the specific religious framework? Think about it for a moment. [Allow thinking time] Let me hear some answers. Rohini? [Allow student response] Exactly — managing grief by giving it structure and community. The rituals give people something to do when they feel helpless. They create a programme of action that carries the bereaved through the acute period of shock and loss. And what about the community? Sanjay, what do you think the velorio or the teravin does for the community, not just the immediate family? [Allow student response] Perfect — they are community renewal events. The gathering of the community around a death reaffirms the network of relationships. You see people you have not seen in years. You remember shared history. In a sense, death rituals are simultaneously about the dead and about the living community reaffirming itself. [55–60 minutes: Summary and Assignment] To close today's lecture. We covered the arc of Goan death customs in both Hindu and Catholic communities: the rituals at the moment of death — the presence of the sacred, the beginning of ritual purity restrictions; the preparation and disposition of the body — cremation in Hindu practice, burial in Catholic practice; the mourning period and its communal dimensions — the keening, the food brought by neighbours, the velorio; the concluding ceremonies — the thirteenth-day ritual, the seventh-day and anniversary Masses; annual ancestral commemoration — Pitru Paksha and All Souls' Day. And we noted the syncretic undercurrent — practices like spirit propitiation and ancestor feeding that run beneath the formal religious frameworks of both communities. Your assignment: visit one cemetery in your area — it can be a Catholic cemetery or, if accessible, note the location and form of a Hindu cremation ground. Observe the graves, the inscriptions, the state of maintenance, the presence of recent offerings. Write one page on what the cemetery tells you about the community's relationship with its dead and its past. Be specific — quote inscriptions, describe what you see. Next class — Lecture 19 — we turn to a topic that is both very personal and very revealing: the Significance of Goan Names. Why do Goans have the names they do? What do names like Braganza, Figueiredo, Pereira, Shenoy, Dessai, Naik tell us about history, caste, and colonial encounter? It is going to be a fascinating session. See you then!