Toothless Ancestors, Felicitous Descendants: The Rite of Secondary Burial in South Taiwan

Abstract

The A. first describes the secondary burial as it is performed in south Taiwan; second, he analyzes the symbolism of the rite. Although often mentioned by anthropologists in their writing on Chinese funerary and burial practices, secondary burial itself has seldom formed the focus of scholarly investigation. The narrative part of this study thus fills a gap in the English ethnographic literature. The analytical part shows that the traditional understanding of secondary burial as a rite of purification is inadequate. The A. emphasizes that the rite has three related goals, namely, purification of the remains, revival of the purified bones, and definition of the geomantic property of the grave. He concludes that while primary burial merely expunges the polluting corpse from the community, secondary burial directly manipulates the corpse to completely eliminate it as a source of danger to the living.