Do the' seven' ceremony
According to the ancient funeral custom, the coffin should be stopped for at least three days. It is said that I hope the dead can come back to life. If you can't be resurrected within three days, your hopes will be completely dashed. In fact, it takes a long time to stop the funeral, because the funeral at that time was very complicated, especially for emperors, who needed huge graves and a lot of funerary objects, which required a lot of manpower and time. Besides, parents should be buried together after death. If the father dies without knowing the mother's tomb and the mother dies without knowing the father's tomb, the deceased shall be buried temporarily until the father's tomb or mother's tomb is found. It is hard to say when the coffin will be parked.
After modern times, coffins were generally buried after "seven days". People think that people don't know they are dead until seven days after they die, so they have to hold a "seven-week" ceremony, seven days and forty-nine days. This is mainly influenced by Buddhism and Taoism.
Buddhism believes that in addition to committing heinous crimes and going to hell immediately, people with many virtues will ascend to heaven immediately, and their souls generally cannot be reincarnated immediately. The undead without metempsychosis is not a ghost, but a body in the process from death to metempsychosis, waiting for the opportunity of metempsychosis to mature. Therefore, if filial piety or relatives and friends can ask the monk to do some Buddhist services for him seven times after his death, the deceased can be reincarnated in a better place. Therefore, Buddhism advocates that it is best to cross over the undead during the July 7th period. If after the July 7th period, the category of the deceased's afterbirth has been finalized, and Buddhist practice will only increase his blessing, but will not change the category of afterbirth. If a person has done a lot of evil before his death, he is destined to keep animals in his next life. When he died on July 7th, if his filial relatives and friends did a big Buddha thing for him, so that he could hear the monk chanting, repent now and be a good person, he could be saved from animals and reborn as a human being. Taoism also believes that it is best to turn over the dead before his "seven spirits" are exhausted.
There are many specific etiquette during the period of "doing seven", which are practiced everywhere. In Guangzhou, the fifth seven days of the old funeral custom must be returned by married women, and the cost of this day is entirely borne by married women. If the deceased has no married woman, it will be done by a married niece or grandniece. The first seven days, the last seven days and the last seven days after death are called "Big Seven". There is a custom of "walking seven times" in this day's memorial service, that is to say, in this day's memorial service, the married daughter and daughter-in-law each carry lanterns and race like kites in the prescribed ceremony to get the first one to run home, commonly known as "fighting for heroes", thinking that the soul of the deceased can protect well-being. Because people think that although people are dead, the soul still has feelings like the living.
Doing seven is usually presided over by a son-in-law. In Zhejiang, it is different to host "doing seven". Hangzhou's son-in-law runs the "May 7th" and Lin 'an and Ningbo's son-in-law runs the "June 7th". On the night before May 7th, "Home Watch" was popular in many places. Legend has it that the deceased didn't know he was dead until that day; You will board the "homecoming observatory" in the underworld, overlook the dead family and meet relatives and friends. Hangzhou people are used to putting the clothes of the dead on the stage, wearing masks and holding umbrellas. In Suzhou area, at five o'clock this day, the children opened the west gate and shouted three times in a row: "Come back!" " "Then he wept bitterly in front of Ling, and at the same time brought the food and wine prepared in advance, and offered a glass of wine, which was called the" Night Banquet of the Five Watches ". This ceremony is called "Calling Five Watches". After dawn, the mourners asked the store to tie up a house with floral paper in advance. Doors, windows, halls, courtyards, well stoves, etc. Very complete. After giving a look, burn it with a torch. It is said that this will give the deceased a room to live in the underworld. This is the so-called "Hua". Now, paper appliances are incinerated to the dead, so that the dead can live a "modern" life in the underworld. On the 49 th, it will "break seven." After seven days' rest, there is a period of mourning, and bereavement is very important. Relatives and friends participate in the "breaking seven" etiquette activities. On the day of "Breaking Seven", Taoist priests were invited to do Dojo, which was euphemistically called "keeping peace". Because this time it is to pray for the living. After singing, the children took off their mourning clothes and put on their uniforms.
In some ethnic groups in southern China, there is also the custom of "entertaining corpses" on Tanabata. Tujia people hold a grand wake every 12 days during the coffin deduction. Young men and women in this village and other villages gather behind the houses where their loved ones have lost, playing, singing and dancing for the funeral, so as to make love and choose partners. Funeral dance, also known as "relieving anxiety" and "beating gongs and drums", is a national dance invented by Ba people, the ancestors of Tujia people, more than 2000 years ago. Later, Tujia children were passed down from generation to generation and have been passed down to this day. After death, especially on the first night after the death of the elders for a hundred years, this kind of funeral dance activity began when the family members were lost. One of them invited a singer to lead with gongs and drums, and the other two helped, singing and dancing around the coffin for several nights. The purpose of funeral dance is to alleviate the grief and melancholy of the family members of the deceased, so as to achieve the purpose of mourning without sadness and injury without pain.