Traditional Funeral Ritual of San Diu People in Thai Nguyen Province

Abstract

The funeral rituals of San Diu people is a cultural phenominon carrying deep humane nature, reflecting clearly San Diu people’ outlook of world and life, expressing not only mourning and regret of the living to the dead but also spiritual relationship between worlds of the living and the dead, and contributing to retainment of ethnic identity. Despite living together with many ethnicities, the funeral practices of San Diu people in Thai Nguyen province at present still have been preserving their distinctive characteristics. This writing generalizes the spiritual conceptions together with rites in the funeral of San Diu people in Thai Nguyen from which it shows the distinctive cultural features of this ethnicity.