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day of the funeral, to leave home, to greet another person, to wear leather footgear or any new garment, to bathe, use makeup, shave or cut hair, or have sexual relations. The mourner sits on the floor or on a low stool, and not on a chair or sofa. From the seventh to the thirtieth day, the person may not shave or wear new clothes. He must refrain from participation in festive activity for a full twelve months. (Wigoder: 273-274) Incorporation occurs when the mourners have fulfilled their ritual duties and have been cleansed. Together with others in the group they partake of a communal meal. They may then reenter the normal, social world. For Van Gennep, the themes of death and rebirth recur periodically during the life of an individual. Physiological death occurs when a person stops breathing. It happens once. Socially a person dies many times, on those occasions when he undergoes transition from one social station to another. Turner finds symbols and metaphors for death in initiation rites. "The initial may be buried, forced to lie motionless in the posture and direction of customary burial, may be stained black, or may be forced to live for a while in the company of masked and monstrous mummers representing the dead" (Turner: 25). In Ndembu (Zambia) initiation rites, circumcision is a metaphor for killing, says Turner, since it kills the novice's childhood status. The blood soaked site of the operation is called "the place of death or dying" (Turner: 21). Van Gennep saw a man's life as a series of separations, transitions and incorporations. Death and rebirth follow one upon the other, a cycle that repeats like the seasons of the year, or the waxing and waning of the moon. With eloquence he wrote: "For groups, as well as for individuals, life itself means to separate and to be reunited, to change form and condition, to die and to be reborn. It is to act, and cease, to wait and rest, and then to begin acting again, but in a different way. And there are always new thresholds to cross; the thresholds to cross; the thresholds of summer and winter, of a season or a year, of a month or a night; the thresholds of birth, adolescence, maturity and old age; the threshold of death and that of the afterlife for those who believe in it." (Van Gennep: 189-190). Functions of Death Ritual One approach to the study of ritual emphasizes the social and psychological functions of behavior. Social functions refer to the effects of a rite on the social structure, the network of social relations binding individuals together in an orderly life. The immediate or direct effects on the individuals involved in the ritual are psychological functions (Radcliff-Brown: 186). For hertz, death ritual offers a respite, a breathing spell, time for the society and the individual to accommodate to a dramatic change. Physical death does not, all at once, convince people that a person has died. Images of him persist. His connections to society are too strong to sever in a moment. The acknowledgment comes slowly. The long intermediary period of the Dayak death ceremony provides the opportunity for this social readjustment. Death not only involves the extinction of the physical body, but also the blotting of a social identity. "When a person dies, the society loses in him much more than a unit; it is stricken in the very principle of its life, in the faith it has in itself" (Hertz: 7'.). Ritual is a collective response to this attack. In effect, society looks death squarely in the eye and reaffirms its own will and resolve. Life will go on, irrespective of the loss of an individual. In smaller communities, individuals play a wider range of social roles so that everyone is relatively important. Death becomes a kind of "national calamity" since the deceased leaves behind physical property, a spouse, and also bundles of roles and statuses which have to be redistributed if social equilibrium is to be restored. (Lewis: 131-133) Mortuary rites, often spaced over a period of months, provide time to recruit for the social positions left vacant by death. Mortuary rituals promote the solidarity of the group. Mandelbaum observes that death ritual among the Kota of south India brings people together at moments of crisis. It reminds them of their responsibilities to the dead, to the bereaved, and to ethers in the society. He points to the cohesion of the immediate family at this time, as relatives console the Mourners and give material aid. Other Kotas, and also nonKotas who knew the deceased lend their presence and assistance, creating a wider integration. Howells likens funeral ceremonies to our periodic oaths of allegiance to the flag. They serve to unify the members of the community, to remind them: of a common commitment. (Howells: 159) Among the Kanuri of the Sudan, death brings the members of the community together and confirms the individual's membership. No matter what differences exist between people, a funeral demands attendance because the deceased was a relative, a friend, or a "man of our to.-,n." Not to participate was "unthinkable" (Cohen: 72). In attending, a person shows respect for the dead. He also reinforces the links with the bereaved and with the society as a whole. For Radcliff-Brown, death rituals are the collective expressions of feeling appropriate to the situation. In this common display of emotion, individuals signal their commitment to each other and to the society itself. Ritual functions to affirm the social
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