singeth

[pat]

Not in Buddhism, Pat, as far as I know. This, I believe, is a ritual of Zoroastrianism.

I stand corrected. Thanks, Mike. It's a great idea, whichever religion it belongs to.

We were told by our Bhutanese guide that after corpses are created in Bhutan, the remaining bones are ground into powder and used to make 108 miniature stupas (Buddhist religious monuments). Apparently 108 has significance in several religions. The main west to east road in Bhutan cuts through the mountains and in many places where we passed a sheer rock face we would see dozens of these little stupas, just a couple of inches tall, carefully placed in crevices in the overhang to protect them from the weather.

Yelnats, theirs is a personal pronoun, like mine or his. It's not a plural of their. Similarly ours, yours and hers.

[mkenuk]

On a more prosaic subject, why is 'theirs' acceptable in Chi? Isn't that just a plural of their?

'their' is a possessive adjective - 'Some of the students had forgotten their books.'
'theirs' is a possessive pronoun. 'Last week they came to our house; next week we're going to theirs'. ('theirs' = 'their house'.)

It's the same as the difference between 'my' and 'mine'.

MK

[mkenuk]

The Parsis practised aerial burials. There were towers of silence in Bombay (Mumbai) where Parsi dead were placed as it was believed that this did not defile the earth as did burial or cremation.

I had vague memories of an episode of the BBC forensic science drama series Waking the Dead which revolved around this method of disposing of corpses.
I looked it up and, sure enough, the first episode in Series 5 was called Towers of Silence; it was first shown in 2005.

MK

[birdy]

I believe some Native Americans (possibly on the Plains where wood would have been scarce?) practiced sky burial, where the body would have been placed on a platform and left for the vultures.  I would prefer this but I'm not sure it's
legal any more and if it were, it would probably only for tribal members. I don't like bugs or their children, would
prefer not to kill a tree (or encourage cracking for gas) for cremation, and do have a fondness for those underappreciated sanitation workers of the bird kingdom, so I am sorry my heirs will probably have to choose a more mundane method of disposing of my remains.

Cheerfully planning for the future, eh?  😀

[yelnats]

I have also read that Mongolian nomads leave their dead out for wolves, and somewhere in east Africa dead are left out for the hyenas. I'm not sure what happens if you die at sea now, but 50 years ago it was a shroud and over the side.

Then our PM, Harold Holt went for a long swim.

[Les303]

Yelnats,

The Holt method sounds like a pretty good eco friendly & free solution.
When the time is nigh , just head into the water & keep walking / swimming toward the horizon. ( You could even have a couple of friends along with a minister on the beach to wave goodbye & say a few words. )
The marine life will take take care of the corpse & what ever is left over will float to the top for Pat's exotic birds to finish off.

As far as nouns , pronouns ,adjectives & bloody false plurals are concerned ,try my approach which is to not give a rats about your hit rate & when desperate try adding an S.
Hers & Theirs are just a couple that caught me out early on however once seeing them in solutions to earlier games i will now get them every time.
Similarly ,i am sure that you will never miss Theirs again.