Thai traditional funeral

Traditional Thai Funeral

From the beginning of my columbarium design project I was assigned to research on my own country’s traditional funeral. Therefore, I was looking at the mainly traditional Thai funeral ceremony which is related to Buddhism ritual. Around 80% of population in Thailand are Buddhists, many rituals in Thailand are taken place in the Buddhist temple area.

The Buddhist funeral process is different from other religious by the number of days. The ceremonies are usually taken place at least for 3 days, but sometimes 7 days depends on the decision of the dead person’s relatives and on the last day the body will be cremated at the temple crematorium. For the royal family or the high priest, the dead person’s body will be kept for 100 days for public worship before the grand cremation ceremony.

After the dead bodies are cremated, the ashes will be kept into the container and move to family houses. Some of them will be kept in the small pagoda in the temple area, also for the royal family they keep the ashes in the pagoda at the royal temple. Moreover, not all family will keep the ashes neither at home or temple, they only keep some of them and throw the rest to somewhere river (that means “to return the spirits to nature”).

Thai funeral was inspired by Hindu and Brahman rituals. They believed in gods world is real, and the spirits of dead people will return to that world after life. The crematoriums have been designed to be like the Sumeru mountain where the gods live, after the body burnt, the spirits would go directly to the heaven.
     
For the ordinary family, The body will be kept in the temple area for religious ritual and worshiping for at least 3 or 7 days before cremated.


Cremation is the final process of funeral and after that the ashes will be kept inside the little pagoda.



For the royal family is more grand, after the body has been kept for 100 days, it will be moved to the temporary crematorium nearby the grand palace in Bangkok.


The crematorium has been designed and decorated like heaven following the Hindu and Brahman believes. This crematorium has been named following the name of the mountain where the to gods live "Sumeru".