ABSTRACT
A cremation is an occasion for gaiety and not for mourning, since it represents the accomplishment of their most sacred duty: the ceremonial burning of the corpses of the dead to liberate their souls so that they can thus attain the higher worlds and be free for reincarnation into better beings. At cremation ceremonies hundreds of people in a wild stampede carry the beautiful towers, sixty feet high, solidly built of wood and bamboo and decorated with tinsel and expensive silks, in which the bodies are transported to the cremation grounds. To the Balinese only the soul is really important, the body being simply an unclean object to be got rid of, about which there is no hysteria. Details which would be considered weird and shocking elsewhere are regarded naturally and with great indifference. The ceremonies acquire greater significance as the date for the cremation approaches.
