ABSTRACT
In the multi-ethnic and multi-religious villages of Northwest Yunnan bordering Myanmar and Tibet, death is a frequent occurrence. Besides illnesses, the steep mountains and turbulent river – the Salween – pose the biggest death threats. Also, the heavy drinking culture exacerbates accidents and health risks. Formerly animistic, these border-dwelling peoples have accepted and incorporated Tibetan Buddhism, Catholicism, and Protestantism into their religious imagination and death rituals from the eighteenth century onwards. Each tradition subscribes to a unique set of death rituals and practices. However, the arrival of a new tradition does not wipe out the older forms. Instead, all these traditions exist side-by-side concurrently. The animists hire spirit mediums as ritual specialists and engage in elaborate exorcising and sacrificial rituals. The Buddhists hire monks to chant on their funerals and sponsor lavish ceremonies to commemorate the dead for three consecutive years. In stark contrast, Protestant pastors say prayers and sing before burying the dead body, which is then left alone. The Catholic priest is summoned to hold a ceremony in the church upon a death in the community and the family members ‘sweep the tomb’ every year. This paper suggests that each death ritual is both boundary-making and boundary-crossing: it both demarcates groups and prompts each villager to engage in a tradition that is not ‘their own.’ Therefore, death reproduces a social order that is pluralistic and becomes a truly inter-religious and inter-ethnic venture into the world of the other.
