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Feast of the Dead: A happy festive occasion. The corpse is kept company by professional mourners so it won't become lonely during the orgiastic feasting and buffalo sacrifices. There are kick fights, buffalo duels, and dancing and singing while carrying the prahu-shaped coffin. Athletic pall bearers throw the tightly rolled body bundle over their shoulders and climb up an almost vertical pole of bamboo notched with toe holes. Every face looks up, then the body is stuffed inside the cliff liang conduct: When attending a funeral give food, cigarettes, perfume, soap, etc., for this means that you share in their grief. When you go to ceremonies, don't sit in any areas that have been prepared or roped off for other guests unless invited to do so. Guys should wear shirts and pants; women full tops with sleeves or long dresses. Longish shorts and sarongs are also acceptable. Don't take a guide along because the Torajas are put more at ease if you are alone; guides tend to tell too many tall stories.
funerals: Torajaland is famous for two things, its great natural beauty and its funerals. Though rain buckets down every afternoon at around 4 pm, Aug., Sept. and Oct. are the best months for funerals in Torajaland; you can practically go out everyday to see one. A family's wealth is accumulated for a lifetime, then most of it is spent on staging the finest, most elaborate funeral' they can afford, a strange blending of solemnity and celebration. A man's worth and prestige is in fact determined by how many buffaloes are slaughtered at his final burial, often taking place years after his 'first' burial. For there are two funerals held when a person dies, one immediately after death and the other at a later date when all the right offerings can be made and all the relatives can be assembled. After the initial burial, the putrefied bones are dug up and cleansed for their spiritual life. Until this second funeral, the spirit of the deceased is considered very dangerous. In olden times, required offerings for the final burial were freshly severed human heads. After the funeral the heads were hung in the rumah adat and in the houses of the closest kin. You can still find old heads in some houses. Funerals are held in special ceremonial fields (rante) where tall circular stones stand. Many villages have rante, but especially good ones are in Lo'ko'mata, Bori, and at Sullukang. Buildings are constructed around this field especially for the funeral and burned afterwards. Here is where the sacrifices take place. Today buffaloes and pigs are slaughtered. It's the little boys privilege to catch the arterial blood from neck, and they get covered in it. Spotted buffaloes are the most prized for sacrifices; they could cost up to Rp350,000. The 2nd day of a funeral is the most interesting because all the relatives of the dead arrive, bearing gifts. If it's a raja, sometimes as many as 10,000 people attend the funeral and as many as 200 buffaloes are sacrificed. There are numerous ways to bury the final remains. Hanging Graves (erong) are wood-carved coffins supported on scaffolding high on cliffs or in caves. The best are at Tambolang, Alla, Kete', Mengkepe and Pala'tokke. Another form of burial is the /fang, sunken holes high up in cliffs, which take up to 3 years to carve out of the cliffside with iron poles. Liang are the ideal grave because they are safe from thieves (as sometimes gold and money are buried with the wealthy) and wild animals. Every corpse buried in the cliff face has its 'double' on a rock or wooden gallery on the outside. These statues (tautau) show the sex of the deceased but usually not their likeness. Best places to see tau-tau are Kete', Pana, Lo'ko'mata, Lemo, Londa, and Sullukang. Kaburan, another kind of grave (found in Salu) look almost like a Mayan structure, a white top with a window into which you put the coffin.