Death as the basic condition of life and as the ultimate destiny of all men is also a decisive factor in the shaping of cultures. This volume aims at surveying how various cultures of South Asia come to terms with the horizon of dying, death and the dead. It combines the ethnographic point of view, that stresses the social and ritual forms related to death. This book sheds light on conceptual systems ritual prescriptions and texts and their interaction with the actual thinking and acting of people. The variety of approaches to this subject found in this volume is a reflection of the diversity of South Asian cultures.
