Posted on 10/21/2018 9:37:07 AM PDT by SMGFan
The Hindu Vedas.
I once was in Shimla (the summer home for the British Raj, in the foothills of the Himalayas) and witnessed funeral rites for a monkey (they're actually rhesus macaques) that had killed itself by climbing on an unshielded power line.
It was prepared exactly as a human would have been; very lovingly washed, dried, bathed in clarified butter (not kidding), and then placed on a funeral pyre and burned.
To the Hindus, smoke is a holy thing and the smoke rising from the burning corpse signifies the release of the soul from its corporeal confinement so it can proceed to the next life.
Dreadful. RIP.
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