The world is full of unimaginable customs. In this article, you will get to know the most bizarre cultural practices of a tribe in the Philippines.
A funeral tradition followed by the Igorot tribe in the Philippines, under which for centuries, the people have been hoisting up their ancestors’ bodies onto a rock face. The history of the ritual of hanging a coffin is said to be 2000 years old.
Meanwhile, the Philippines is not the only place. In remote areas of China and Indonesia, tribes have been documented to have carried out this practice too.
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In China, hanging coffins are still seen on the mountains near the Yangtze River. Although their numbers have dwindled, many coffins are still preserved. Its origin is considered to be from Fujian province, which was adopted by the ‘Bo community’ of the Ming dynasty.
The people of the ‘Bo community’ believed that this ritual allows their ancestors an easy passage to heaven. Some historians believe that they do not want to distance themselves from their loved ones, while some say that they were kept at a height considering the height closer to heaven.
After studying a 7 feet coffin, it was found that a special wood named Nanmu was used to make the coffin. The speciality of this wood was that it prevented the decomposition of the body. Some important elements were also kept along with the dead bodies to protect them from decay. Either they were hung with the help of beams or they were kept in small caves. Apart from this, people also used to nail coffins with the help of cracks made in the rocks.
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