The Last Sacrifice

Antyeshti, the last sacrifice, is the Hindu funeral, counted as the final samskara or life-cycle rite, of which cremation is the central act. The body is washed, wrapped and carried to the cremation ground, and the pyre is lit by the chief mourner, usually the eldest son, who in the older rite performs the act of kapala-kriya, breaking the skull so that the vital breath may be released. The fire is addressed as it is in the Vedic sacrifice, as the carrier of the offering, so that the cremation is understood as a last self-offering into the fire that first received the person's household rites.

The rite does not end at the pyre. In the classical scheme the deceased is at first a hovering, incomplete being (preta), and the sequence of shraddha offerings over the following days and the ritual balls of rice (pinda) build for the dead a new subtle body and carry them across to join the ancestors (pitrs). Much of this is set out in the Garuda Purana, recited for the dying and the dead. The whole complex expresses a distinctive view: that the living are actively responsible for completing the passage of the dead.