A Contribution to a Study of the Collective Representation of Death

Abstract

Each of us believes we sufficiently understand what death is, because it is a familiar event and because it gives rise to intense emotion. It seems at once ridiculous and sacrilegious to put the value of that intimate knowledge in doubt and to desire to reason about a matter where the heart alone is competent. The Dutch government, for reasons of hygiene, forbade this practice, at least in certain areas; but, beyond foreign intervention, quite different causes must have restricted the expansion of this form of provisional burial. The mystical importance attached by the Indonesians to the disintegration of the body also shows itself in the practices concerning the products of the decomposition. Among the Olo Ngaju, the pot in which they are collected is broken during the second funeral and their fragments are placed with the bones in the final burial site.

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