Saw a post quoting the Epic of Gilgamesh about Enkidu's death, saying, "My friend Enkidu, whom I love, has turned to clay" and a reblog mentioned that the epic itself is written in clay, and that fired something in my brain. So then Han and I ended up furiously texting each other for half an hour, and below is my attempt to summarize the convo.
I am updating Raatasira and Pilasira burial practices. Binasinga is in the works. Here is the the primer on Caandiki burial practices, which will not be changing, but will be added to.
They cremate their dead and mix the ashes into clay tablets. Generally you write your loved one's name and great accomplishments on the tablet for posterity. Then the tablet is added to a special house of the dead that is kept by each family. The house is fully built out of the clay tablets, and more rooms are added as more tablets are collected. Items of familial importance-- weapons, tools, dolls, etc.-- are kept in the house. No one lives here, though the house is visited often by family members who want to be close to lost loved ones.
So obviously house size adds a lot of prestige because it means that your family has been in this area for a longass time. If a house is lost due to a natural disaster or war, it is pretty fucking catastrophic.
The house is called a buulher. Buul can be translated to "honored ancestors" and her refers specifically to the type of building it is, one where memories are kept and honored.
This of course has historically been twisted by warlords conquering neighboring lands-- you can build a house of the dead out of a village you razed in a mockery of the concept. There is at least one warlord who used it as an actual house to live in, which is deeply dishonorable. I'm sure there's some kind of long epic a la the Iliad about a warlord who did such a thing, and the surviving families' efforts to get the clay of their loved ones back. Sneaking into the warlord's house, stealing clay from the very walls of her house to bring your loved ones home.
Buulher are obviously easier to create and maintain on the homeplanet Duniyaa. I imagine that zoning on a space station must be a nightmare. Luckily (?) space-faring families tend to be smaller with shorter histories, so the buulher can be kept in the yard like a shed. It'll be a problem a few generations down the line, though.
Moving to a different neighborhood must also be a bitch. Gotta bring the dead house. Dismantle it, transport it, build it in the new place. Otherwise you'll have to still travel to visit it and keep it clean.
Raatasira also use clay with their dead, though I am thinking maybe some kind of jewelry. Being the control freaks that they are, they have a hopping business transporting clay offworld specifically for mixing loved ones' ashes in. This can of course cause issues-- on the one hand, clay is clay, and you don't necessarily have the money to travel to Duniyaa and dig up clay where mother was born to mix her ashes in for Proper honor. On the other hand, this clay is like. commercial, and it has a Raatasingh name on top of that, and it's like, is it really what mama would have wanted? Mixing her ashes into a Raatasira product?
Uncle Tamit sure is putting up a fuss but he's not going to help pay for a trip to Duniyaa so he can keep his opinions to himself. It's clay. It's fine. Mama is going into the buulher in the yard and you'll visit her every day for a few months to make sure she's settling in well. It's fine. You'll just use your best handwriting to make sure that at least is perfect, to make up for it. It's fine.
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