Introduction

The introductory chapter delves into the indigenous beliefs and practices surrounding death, eschatology and initiation rites in Northeast India. This chapter seeks to draw attention to the fact that indigenous knowledge systems and epistemes frequently clash with a Western modern discourse on death by presenting a range of perspectives on death in relation to the diverse indigenous communities of Northeast India. This book does not present a unified picture of the Northeast by comparing and contrasting the various funeral and burial rituals of the region’s indigenous communities. Rather than attempting to create a universalising template, this investigation into the death and the afterlife in Northeast India is based on the postmodern concept of difference. Despite the region’s intertwined history, the chapters emphasise that the various ethnic communities of the Northeast cannot be characterised by a single cosmology of belief patterns or a single phenomenological notion of ‘experience.’ The editors of this book argue that the region’s religious tenets and cultural customs are stronger when they are distinguished from one another, thereby challenging the widespread promotion of a single indigenous identity. The chapter then summarises the major thematic concerns of the chapters, which investigate the universality and specificity of death through the lenses of various cosmologies and religious traditions (animist, shamanic, Buddhist, Hindu, and Judeo-Christian).