Social and Economic Aspects of Circumcision and Wedding Ceremonies
Chapter 6 Chapter 6 The Slametan Cycles
Death
Funerals: Lajatan
In contrast to other rites of passage, all funerals (lajatan) are still in
evitably conducted by the tnodin, the official religious specialist of the village. A few people call him now and then to lead prayers for birth and circumcision ceremonies (he is almost always a strong santri), and in any case he must take the groom down to the naib’s office for the Islamic part of the marriage ceremony; but it is at death that he really comes into his own as general director of the entire affair.
When there is a death in a family the first thing they do is to send for the modin, and the second is to spread the word around the neighborhood that a death has occurred. If death occurs in the late afternoon or during the night, they wait until the next morning to begin the funeral process.
Javanese funerals occur as quickly as possible after death. A man dead at 10 a.m. will be buried by noon or shortly thereafter, and a man dead at 4 p.m. will be in the grave by ten the next morning. Although the family will sometimes delay an hour or so if some relatives are coming from a distance, apparently they rarely delay long enough: these distant relatives never seemed to be on time for any of the funerals I saw. The usual reason given when one asks why there is so much haste is that the spirit of the dead man is flying around loose (it is often conceived of as a bird) until he is buried, and this is dangerous to everyone, especially to the survivors.
The sooner he is buried, the sooner his spirit can return to its natural home.
As soon as they receive the news of a death, the neighbors drop what
ever they are doing and go off to the house where the death has occurred.
(Even salaried workers on the railroad and in the government offices leave immediately on such news.) Each woman brings a tray of rice, which, after a handful of it has been thrown out the door by the bereaved, is immediately cooked for a slametan. The men bring tools with which to
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make grave markers, a litter to carry the body to the grave (in most cases, however, this is rented or provided by the burial society), and wooden supports to put inside the grave. Actually, only a half-dozen or so of the very close neighbors need bring tools; the other men just come and stand around chatting in the yard.
More than any other single passage rite the funeral draws everyone.
Class lines, ideological antagonisms, and personal quarrels often modify the strictly geographical attendance at other slametans, especially in the town of Modjokuto, but everyone who lives near a dead man and any
one in the town who knew him at all well or is in any way related to him comes to his funeral. Again, one finds the notion that one should go to other people’s funerals so they will come to his. When I questioned one man about a burial society to which he belonged, he said that the money one gets at death is only nominal. What is important is that all the members of the society are obligated to come to a member’s funeral.
When the modin arrives, he strips the corpse, laying a sarong loosely over the genitals, ties the jaw up with a string over the top of the head so it cannot drop open, and ties the feet together. The arms are crossed on the chest, right hand over left, with the tips of the fingers touching the shoulders, and the body is laid with its head to the north, a lamp being sometimes lit above the head. The corpse is then washed by the close relatives and friends of the deceased—preferably (but not necessarily) the women if the deceased is female, the men if male—under the direction of the modin. The relatives hold the corpse on their laps while sitting on chairs so the water drenches them and their clothes. This act is called pangkon, the same word which is used when one cradles a small child on one’s lap, or when the groom cradles the not yet pubescent wife, and as such is a last demonstration of nurturing love by the survivors for the deceased.
The corpse is bathed in the front yard, protected from general view by hastily erected bamboo matting—although people feel free to look over the matting at will. Usually three different kinds of water, each in a different earthenware container, are used: one with flowers in it; one with money, a special kind of tree leaf, and various herbs in it; and one plain, without any
thing in it. In addition, there is a shampoo for the hair made of burned rice stalks. The modin pours the first dipper of water on the corpse, and then the other relatives each take a turn.
Being able to hold one’s deceased father, wife, sister, uncle, or whom
ever on one’s lap while he is being washed, is called being tegel—able to do something odious, abominable, and horrible without flinching, to stick it out despite an inward fear and revulsion. No one is absolutely required to do this; and if none of the family members or close relatives is tegel, the corpse may be laid crossways on three banana-tree trunks. Since they are expected to be tegel and if they are not are severely criticized, most people would feel deeply ashamed to withdraw from this duty or to show any strong open emotion while performing it. A young girl I knew was crying slightly when her father died rather suddenly, and her relatives told her she would not be allowed to wash the body if she did not stop crying, which she
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After the bathing the bathers wash their hands and feet in the water which is left. The orifices of the body are plugged with cotton dipped in perfume, the body is wrapped in white muslin and tied in three places (feet, waist, and top of the head) by the modin, and then about a half-dozen santris begin to chant the Koran under his leadership. The chant takes place next to the corpse, which has now been placed in the main living room, and lasts from five to ten minutes. Then the body is placed on the litter, a bamboo framework over which brand new textiles have been stretched with strings of flowers laid across them. These textiles are not buried with the corpse;
and one of the standing graveyard jokes seems to be to bargain with the man who carries them back from the grave as though he were peddling them.
The litter is carried into the yard, where the descendants (usually children) of the deceased duck back and forth under it three times. This is to indicate that they are iklas—that their emotions have been quieted and have been flattened out into a true detachment, that they feel no psy
chological pain at the departure of the deceased, and that their hearts are already free. A few coins wrapped in paper are then distributed to each person at the funeral to symbolize the same idea: as they can give away money without feeling any remorse, so they can let the deceased go with no wish to cling to him emotionally. (Sometimes, but not always, a few of the guests are given banana-leaf dishes of rice to eat at this time, in which case they get no coins, for the latter are a substitute for the former.) A vessel filled with water is thrown on the ground and broken, also to symbolize iklas, and the litter moves off to the graveyard, carried by the men, while the women remain behind at the house, scattering salt so the soul will not come back and disturb them. (Children, except the dead man’s own, are kept away from funerals because they are so easily entered by spirits.)
As there is almost always a graveyard within a half mile, the funeral procession is not extended. At the head of it walk the men carrying the homemade wooden grave markers— sharply pointed ones for a male corpse, flat or rounded ones for a female—marked usually only with the name and date of death of the deceased. They are followed by the men carrying the planks for the grave.* Next comes a man carrying a golden or bronze bowl containing yellow rice, turmeric, various coins, flowers, and betel, all of which he strews along the ground as he walks to show the following corpse, borne usually by four to eight men, the way to the grave. Behind the corpse, over whose head is held a parasol to shield it from the sun, comes the body of attending men, rarely less than fifteen, sometimes as many as two hundred.
* The grave is prepared during the time the washing and winding are going on. It is dug about three feet wide and about two or three feet deep. In the floor of the excavation a slit-trench just wide and deep enough for the corpse is cut. The planks are placed over the trench after the body has been placed in it so that when the grave is filled no earth falls directly on the corpse.
People change off in the jobs of scattering the rice and flowers, holding the parasol, and bearing the corpse, for it is considered necessary that all male members of the family and very close friends should “feel the weight of the corpse” for at least a short time.
The ceremony at the graveyard is brief. The body is taken off the litter and put into the grave on its side, being handed down to three men standing in the grave. The body is laid to rest on seven stones with its head pointed to the north. The strings on the shroud are loosened and the face exposed so that the cheek touches the earth, and then either the modin or some other santri jumps down into the grave and shouts the Confession of Faith three times into the dead man’s ear. The planks are then laid in place, the dirt pushed into the grave, and the grave markers erected. The modin reads the tèlkim, a set funeral speech addressed to the deceased, first in Arabic and then in Javanese (some old-fashioned modins refuse to trans
late it, however, regarding this as against the strict tenets of Islam) : Oh, you are already living in the world of the grave (Moslem corpses remain slumbering in the grave until Judgment Day—a kind of limbo). Do not forget the Confession of Faith. You will shortly be visited by two messengers of God, two angels (Mungkar and Nakir, who visit each new corpse to ques
tion him about his faith, etc.). (The angels will say:) “O human being, who is your God and what is your religion, and who is your prophet and what is your religious lodestar, and what is the direction in which you turn to pray, and what has been commanded of you and who are your brothers?” You must answer clearly and forthrightly; you must not be afraid or startled: “The Lord Allah is my God; Islam is my religion; Muhammad is my Prophet; the Holy Koran is my lodestar; I turn toward the Black Stone of Mecca to pray; the five daily prayers are what I have been commanded; all Moslems, men and women, are by brothers.” O Pak Tjipto (the name of the deceased), you know already know that the questions of the angels do in fact exist, that life in the grave does in fact exist, that the balancing of good and evil deeds does in fact exist, that heaven and hell indeed do in fact exist, and that the Lord Allah will wake each individual in the grave on Judgment Day is a fact as well.
After this the great mass of mourners goes back to their homes or jobs, but a small group of close neighbors, friends, and relatives returns to the house for a slametan. (This group must include all those who actually worked at the funeral—who dug the grave, made the grave markers, etc.). All death slametans are marked by two special food symbols : the small round rice- flour pancakes called apem, which are the special food of the dead and of one’s ancestors;* and a flattened-out disc of rice with two large cones of rice seven or eight inches high. The flattened rice again symbolizes iklas;
but in addition the contrast between the flat disk and the cones is supposed to suggest the difference between death and hie—the flattened-out featurelessness of death and the phallic upward-directedness of life. However, some others say one of the cones is for the living, the other for the dead.
Slametans of exactly the same form, but of increasing size in terms of the
* Sometimes one finds apem cakes at other slametans too, where their intent is always to honor the ancestors; but their real place is in death rituals.
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The last s la m e ta n , which marks the point at which the body is thought to have decayed entirely to dust, is the most elaborate. One is supposed to kill ritually a dove, goose, or other fowl, which is then washed in flower water, shampooed, and wrapped in muslin exactly as the corpse was. (This ceremony is called the k ê k a h , and sometimes occurs at an earlier sla m e ta n ,
but in any case only once. It is often omitted altogether nowadays.) The
a p e m and the rice-disc symbol of death are omitted; the whole chicken for the Prophet and the various other foods used for s la m e ta n s on happier occasions are re-introduced; and once again one gives out coins to the guests as a symbol of one’s final turning from the dead toward the living.
After this sla m e ta n the gap between the dead and the living is absolute, but for one’s parents one should go to their grave to strew flowers on each an
niversary of their death, on the day before the Fast begins, when one is ill or when one’s children are, and any time one happens to dream of them, for this means that they are hungry and wish to be fed. (One may, if the dream is vivid enough, give a small s la m e ta n and take some of it to a prayer house and have the sa n tris there chant a while for the dead; or one may merely put some food, tea, and flowers at the crossroad.)
After death one also puts out food for the dead—the kind of food the de
ceased especially liked—near the s e n to n g te n g a h spot in the house or by the bed he died in for 40 days after death, and usually a sa d fè n is added.
One I saw included an ancient photograph of the deceased. If one wishes, he may for about 35 rupiahs hire some sa n tris to chant in their prayer house an hour or two each night for seven days after death, and even some pretty anti-Islamic people do this. As an old sa n tri lady said to me in reference to my vigorously abangan landlady, “People like Bu Ardjo hate
sa n tris like me, but they need us to do their praying for them.”