SIMPLY PUT, cremation is the practice of reducing a corpse to its essential elements by burning.
According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, cremation started as early as 1000 BC by the Greeks who introduced it to the West. And it was a way to ensure that soldiers slain on foreign soil got funerals that could be attended by their families. The bodies were incinerated on the battlefield and ashes were gathered and sent home for ceremonial entombment.
Although ground burials continued, cremation became so closely associated with valor and manly virtue, patriotism and military glory that it was regarded as the only fitting conclusion of an epic life.
Zeus forced Achilles to surrender Hector's body to his father so that he, King Priam of Troy could have it cremated royally. The greater the hero, the greater was the ceremony. Achilles set the pattern in providing a pyre 100 feet square for his friend Patroclus. Achilles was incinerated even more gloriously after his death - in a "rainment of the gods" after 17 days of mourning.
After the flames were were quenched with wine, his bones were bathed in oil and wine and placed in a golden urn with those of Patoclus.
Lavish funeral feasting games followed, and a great tomb was erected for him on a headland above the Hellespont.
MODERN CREMATIONS
Cremation in modern times is very different. Open fires are no longer used; instead the body was placed in an open chamber where intense heat transformed it in a couple hours to white almost powdery bones. It is disposed of according to law and sentiment either in a garden, at sea, interred in the earth or in a columbarium.
As the shortage of cemetery space in urban areas becomes more acute and as objections are answered, cremation may become the chief form of burial. Many Protestant churches have actively supported it; the Roman Catholic church has announced that it is not prohibited. The Orthodox Jewish religion however, continues to declare it forbidden. Legal objection that it would allow crimes to go undetected are being countered by improvements in techniques and standards in coroners' offices. Cemetery owners and undertakers have also minimised their opposition since cremation has proved no less profitable than more traditional methods of burial.
CREMATION FACT FILE
In 1884, a British court first ruled cremation a legal procedure.
In the United States, the first crematorium was built in Washington, Pennsylvania in 1876.
In 1881 the New York Cremation Society was organised.
In 1913 the Cremation Association of America was organised.
Although widely accepted, up to the 1970s just about eight per cent of the dead were cremated but in England, West Germany, and Denmark, the figure is more than 50 per cent.
In Japan where in 1875 the practice was illegal, it has now become almost universal.
Source: Encyclopaedia Britannic
