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GCSE Religious Studies · key term
A Tibetan funeral practice in which the dead body is offered to vultures.
Used by AQA and Eduqas
Paper 1
Revise: Death and Mourning CeremoniesThe body may be cremated or given to vultures in a practice known as sky burial. Offering the body to vultures can be understood as a final gift to other living creatures. This practice also developed in conditions where firewood was scarce and frozen ground made burial difficult.
Paper 3
A Tibetan funeral practice in which the body is offered to vultures, expressing generosity and the impermanence of the body.
Revise: Death and MourningSome Tibetan Buddhists practise sky burial, in which the body is offered to vultures. This expresses impermanence because the physical body is no longer preserved. It can also be understood as a final act of generosity: the body provides food for other living creatures.
Cremation is found in all three settings, so it is not by itself a contrast. Tibetan sky burial provides a contrasting way of treating the body.
Use named examples when comparing traditions: Japanese burial of cremated ashes and posthumous names; Tibetan sky burial and the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
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