Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 November 1885 — Burial Customs in Timur. [ARTICLE]

Burial Customs in Timur.

The burial of a relative in Timur is a very serious and expensive business. It involves a gift to the deceased from all his blood relatives, and, in return, a burial feast. If the deceased is a man of rank, this feast is a matter very often of ruin to the family. The festivity must be given, and at the same time the hospitality is expected to be extraordinarily lavish. Consequently it often happens that the day of the funeral is indefinitely postponed for months, and even for years, until the family has had time to accumulate sufficient wealth of cattle and substance. In the meantime the corpse is inclosed in matting, and housed either in a tree or a hut and left to itself. Then for days there is a savage banqueting and reveling, and the interment at last is carried out Among the more savage races of the Timur Lant islands and Timur, the skull of an ancestor is severed after burial and kept as a relic in a place of honor within the house.— Chicago Herald.