Beranda
10 Billion For Toraja Funeral Costs. There are so many popular funerary practice such as sky burial in Tibet, Ngaben in Bali Indonesia and also Rambu Solok in Toraja Indonesia. These funerary rituals have their own special part and costs. When sky burial is popular because of its disassembling of the death body and Ngaben well known just because it magical ritual, Toraja funeral (Rambu Solok) is interesting because it’s highly cost.
Toraja Funeral
Rambu Solok is important funerary ritual which defines social stratification. Here we will easily seen peoples's social stratification. This ritual is the most important and costly in Toraja society. From this funerary ritual people will be classified into social stratification. The richer and the more powerful people will have a higher social rank. In Aluk believe this funeral party can only be held by a nobleman people since in this ceremony the families of the death need to
The Process of Rambu Solok Ceremony
Once the family is able to provide sacrificial animal this Rambu Solok Ceremony will be performed and it may spend more than a year after their family death. Below are the details processes of this ceremony.
Moving a death body into Tongkonan Tammuon - the first place of the death body came from
The death body moved here only for a day. In this place they will slaughter a Buffalo; they slash this Buffalo with machete in one slash death. To build a Tongkonan people need for more than 2 month and it cost 300 - 500 million rupiah.
Moving a death body into Tongkonan Barebatu
On this day they held a similar ceremony as in Tongkonan Tammoun, they slaughter buffaloes and share the meat for the people around tongkonan. First sequence we will see that people who carry a huge gong, then followed with Sam Milby saratu (or a regular we are familiar with umbul-umbul), and right behind the line of Sam Milby saratu there Tendong (buffalo), followed by lamba-lamba and then final-Duba Duba.
The remains will be buried in rante (specific areas where the procession lasts), there are stand loud (temporary house made of bamboo and wood) that has been given a number. Vocal in itself serves as a place of residence of the relatives who came later, because during this event they were not returned to their homes but stay in vocal provided by the families who are grieving.
Moving a death body into Rante
Rante is a special place to perform the ceremony. Funeral procession finally reached the rante and it will be placed in lakkien (tower place funeral procession for last). The tower is the tallest building between loud-loud that is in rante. Lakkien are made of bamboo tree with custom home design Toraja. Corpse laid on lakkien before later is buried. In rante two buffaloes ready to be cleared.
Guess welcoming
After the death body arrived in rante the next process is welcoming the family guess, this process will be done in some days until the entire guess placed well in the special place provided.
Burial Day
The last process is a burial day in which the death will be placed into the grave. Some of them will be buried in banks (mountain side) and other will be buried in patane - a graveyard of wood shaped like a custom home.
The Cost for Rambu Solok Ceremony
The expensive cost of this burial ceremony is come from the slaughtering of buffaloes and pigs. This because of the number of those two animal which have to be slaughtered and also they prices. In one ceremony people of Toraja will potentially slaughter more than a hundred buffaloes and thousand of pigs. The number of the animals slaughtered will become a measurement for the society class of that family, the more buffaloes and pigs slaughtered the higher their social class.
From the number of the animal slaughtered we may state that it will give more cost. One Tedong Bongga - a special buffalo for the ceremony - will reach of hundreds million rupiah and even the price will reach 670 million rupiah (source).
Besides, the families will also prepared pigs for this ceremony. The prices of this animal are also not cheap. Beside about the price that will cause high cost, the number of the slaughtered animal will also significant for the total cost which have to be paid.
For this Toraja funeral, they have to prepare not only the sacrificial animal but also other equipment which as expensive as the sacrificial animal. The total cost for performing one burial ceremony (Rambu Solok) will reach 10 billion rupiah
Spending a lot of money to perform this burial ceremony means nothing for those Toraja societies. It will be a great pleasure and proud for them who can perform and sacrifice more than the other.
