prominent role in sanctifying not only stupas, but
monasteries, shrines, statues, and so forth. The ex-
treme form of sanctifying the corporeal remains of a
saint is to display the mummified body on an altar.
This tradition was not uncommon in Mahayana coun-
tries, reflecting the belief that an “attained” individual
leaves behind a “diamond-like” body that remains
erect. This view is of a piece with the early belief that
buddhas were inevitably marked with thirty-two ma-
jor and eighty minor physical abnormalities, such as
long ears and tongues or webbed hands and feet, stem-
ming from the principle that spiritual achievement
brought corporeal manifestations, much like the stig-
mata in Europe. Numerous mummified monks can
still be viewed in China and Japan today, and in 2002
a deceased rin po che(teacher) in Mongolia was dis-
covered in this form. We know that the drinking of
lacquer, a poison that ended the saint’s life but also
stiffened his joints, preceded some of these mummi-
fied deaths.
But a tomb does not need a relic to be considered
sacred. In Japan, where the relics of famous monks are
frequently kept on the altars of monasteries, the un-
common dead typically have multiple tombs with or
without something material of the individual interred
therein. For example, the fact that the body of Oda
Nobunaga (1534–1582), the general who reunited the
country after a hundred years of war, was never re-
covered did not impede the establishment of at least
sixteen “empty” burial sites to honor him. While such
gravesite mimes are not universal, the stupa or pagoda,
its architectural variant, did become a universal burial
marker for the uncommon dead throughout Buddhist
Asia. Typically these house relics of the deceased in the
form of s ́arlra,bone fragments remaining after cre-
mation. As with the Buddha, such burial edifices fre-
quently have become both the objects of pilgrimage
and centers for monastic communities.
The burial sites of the uncommon dead may also
serve as focal points of sectarian identity. When this
occurs, other expressions of collective identity, such as
larger mausoleums and the pilgrimage routes, typically
accompany it. In Japan, this pattern is particularly
striking, having led to the custom of interring the com-
mon dead at the burial sites of saints, such as KUKAI
and SHINRAN, both founders of their major denomi-
nations. The recent dead are thereby thought to be pu-
rified by their proximity to the sacred dead, improving
their karmic status for achieving rebirth in Tusita
Heaven or AMITABHA’s Pure Land. Since family mem-
bers in Japan often want the remains of their loved
ones to be kept nearby yet also desire to help them af-
ter death, what is left of the body (ashes and bits of
bone after cremation, whole bones when the flesh has
disappeared after an earth burial) may be divided and
two graves created—one at a local cemetery, and an-
other at the site of the saint. The Honganji branch of
Shinran’s denomination has been selling spots for in-
terment at the grave of Shinran since at least the six-
teenth century, a policy that has created both revenue
and a deep sense of fealty among the branch’s non-
clergy members.
It should also be noted that rebirth in the Pure Land
of Amitabha has slowly grown into a kind of norma-
tive objective of postmortem ritual for most of the Ma-
hayana world, from Tibet to Japan, since the seventh
century, cutting across a range of schools, beliefs, and
sectarian identities. The rhetoric of attaining the Pure
Land promises nonbacksliding status and swift progress
to buddhahood, yet it also includes the imperative to
postpone buddhahood in order to return to samsara to
help others attain a similar postmortem peace.
One of the important principles guiding relations
between the dead and their deceased kin or intimates
is that of merit transfer (parivatta, parinama), a fun-
damental theme in funerary rituals devoted to raising
the recently deceased to the Pure Land, for example.
Adopted from earlier Brahmanic rites for the dead
called ́rasddhathat elevated the status of the recently
deceased from unstable ghost (preta) to divinity
(deva), Buddhism similarly began with tales of ghosts
who are incapable of initiating action to improve their
situation. In the Theravada text Petavatthu,the ghost
of a deceased person may appear to someone in his or
her family requesting that offerings be made to the
san ̇gha with the merit ritually transferred to the ghost.
If the ghost is morally capable of appreciating the
goodness of the act, he or she can be transformed into
a deity, just as in Brahmanism.
In the Mahayana, the practice of merit transfer is
greatly expanded, but it shares with Theravada a pre-
sumption that the efficacy depends upon the ability of
the deceased to perceive religious messages ritually
sent to him or her and to appreciate their meaning.
It is widely believed in Mahayana countries that in
the intermediate state one has the potential to refuse
the samsaric body offered and, if one can steer clear
of distractions, awaken to the truth and proceed di-
rectly to nirvana. The so-called TIBETANBOOK OF THE
DEADis meant to guide the dead when confronted
with different choices as to what path to follow in that
realm. Kinfolk and close friends gather repeatedly toDEATH