A tra­di­tional Tora­jan funeral is a big event for the local people in Tana Toraja. Rel­at­ives have usu­ally been sav­ing up for a long time to be able to buy water buf­fa­loes and pigs to be sac­ri­ficed dur­ing the funer­als. For this reason the deceased will be given their own room in a house and are con­sidered still alive until the actual funeral.

Depend­ing on which class the fam­ily is from, a funeral can last from a day to a week and the amount of anim­als to be sac­ri­ficed var­ies also. A fam­ily from the low class might only sac­ri­fice 2 buf­fa­loes and a few pigs. A middle class funeral will usu­ally last 3 days and dur­ing its course maybe 15 buf­fa­loes will be sac­ri­ficed. People from the high class might sac­ri­fice 100 or even 200 buf­fa­loes over the course of a week.

The price of a buf­falo starts at about 20 mil­lion Rupiah, which is around 2000 USD or 1400 EUR. The price then rises steeply the big­ger and the more white a buf­falo is, reach­ing around 100 mil­lion in some cases.

The begin­ning of a funeral day nor­mally starts with the sac­ri­fice of a couple buf­fa­loes. While friends or fam­ily mem­bers cut up the anim­als, pro­ces­sions of other fam­ily mem­bers take place. They receive food and tea or cof­fee in a spe­cial build­ing and move to their alloc­ated tem­por­ary built shel­ters after a while to make place for other fam­ily members.

Every group of fam­ily brings their own gifts of anim­als, but not all anim­als neces­sar­ily get sac­ri­ficed. At the end of the day every fam­ily mem­ber will be given a piece of meat from the sac­ri­ficed animals.

The major­ity of Tora­jans are Prot­est­ants and they don’t see any con­flict between their old tra­di­tional anim­istic beliefs and their rel­at­ively new reli­gion. I won­der, though, what the prot­est­ant church has to say on that matter.

The Tora­jan people are very wel­com­ing and don’t mind at all that hordes of tour­ists come to watch their tra­di­tional funer­als. They rather see it as a sign of respect for the dead. Although tour­ists aren’t required to bring a buf­falo or a pig as a gift, every per­son has to bring some­thing, a car­ton of cigar­ettes being the most pop­u­lar choice it seems.

Below is a short video from the funeral I atten­ded. The deceased woman ori­gin­ated from the middle class and had been dead for about a year.

You can find more pho­tos from Tana Toraja here.