The purpose of this paper is to compare the practices concerned with death, dying, and life after death among three faith communities: Christians, Hindus, and the Sioux Nation. It will deal not only with funeral customs, but also, to some extent, with attitudes toward ôghostsö and other denizens of the other world.
The discussion of Christians here will be limited to conservative Roman Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox communities, and ôHigh Churchö Protestants, since these ôcatholicö Christians share similar funeral and mourning customs; whereas those of other varieties of Christianity have undergone a highly divergent evolution. Likewise, discussion of Hindu practices will be limited to those of the major sects, which share a common and apparently ancient philosophy about the concepts of karma and reincarnation. Discussion of Sioux practices will be based on information from Sioux ômedicine men,ö such as Black Elk and John Fire Lame Deer. Even though Black Elk had converted to Roman Catholicism in 1904, was engaged in creating a theology that combined traditional Sioux religion and Roman Catholic doctrine, and so cannot be taken uncritically as a source of primary information on traditional Sioux practices, any practices he discusses that are clearly different from those of traditional Christianity are probably of Lakota origin. John Fire Lame Deer seems less influenced by Christian concepts, and can probably be considered a more reliable source.
The method for dealing with a dead body strongly preferred among traditional ôcatholicö Christians is interment: burying the body underground or placing it in a sealed vault. Traditional Christian practices concerned with death and dying originally arose out of Jewish practices, and they in turn out of Near Eastern burial customs that can be traced back for tens of millennia (on these customs see, e.g., Kenyon, 1960, pp. 41-43, 47, 51-53, 84-86, 137ff). Burial of family...