Sky burial

What it is

Sky burial is a way of laying a dead person to rest that is kept in Tibetan and Mongolian Buddhist communities. The body is placed on a mountain top or another high place and left open to the weather. Scavenging creatures take part, among them crows, vultures, bears and jackals. In Tibetan the rite is known as jhator, a name that carries the sense of feeding birds. A similar practice belongs to Zoroastrian tradition, where the dead are laid on stone towers called dakhma. In both, the body is given away rather than buried or burned, and no grave is kept.

Origins and history

The custom is first written about in a Tibetan Buddhist text from the twelfth century, the Bardo Thodol, often called the Book of the Dead. Some accounts link it to the Chöd teachings brought by Dampa Sangye, who died in 1117. Another suggestion is that it came from Zoroastrian ways of stripping the dead, offered as food to animals. Practical needs also mattered: much of Tibet sits above the tree line, timber is scarce, the ground is rocky or frozen, and cremation was kept for high lamas and a few leading figures. Mongolians once buried their dead. The Tümed adopted sky burial after turning to Tibetan Buddhism under Altan Khan, and more groups followed in Qing times.

How it is done

Accounts from observers differ in detail. Often the body is carried to a charnel ground on a ridge, a place always higher than the land around it. Prayers may be said near the corpse, sometimes on the day before. The cutting is usually the work of rogyapas, or body-breakers, who may talk and joke as they work, which Buddhists hold helps the dead move on. A tokden, a master of the rite, may direct it. Vultures are given the flesh. What is left of the bone is broken with mallets, ground together with tsampa, and set out for crows and hawks. Only people close to the dead person usually watch.

The vultures

Himalayan and griffon vultures do most of the eating. Where several bodies are offered in a day, the birds may need coaxing, sometimes with a ritual dance. Buddhists read the birds' behaviour as a sign. If few vultures come, if meat is left behind when they fly off, or if they ignore the body altogether, people take it as a bad omen for the dead person's rebirth. At busy sites the number of bodies may be limited, and lamas look for other ground. It is said that too many burials in one place can bring ghosts. The vultures also clean the land, and their falling numbers led China to protect some species in 1988.

Today and change

Both the Chinese and Mongolian governments once treated the rite as superstition and a danger to health. Many temples were shut, and during the Cultural Revolution the practice was banned as one of the Four Olds. Families who could not hold a sky burial sometimes put their dead in rivers or in the ground, and some feared those souls would never find rest. The rite carried on in the countryside and now has official protection, yet it grows less common: rules limit it near cities, vulture numbers have fallen, and it costs more than cremation because the yak that carries the body is set free. In 2010 a lama, Metrul Tendzin Gyatso, rebuilt the cutting platform near Larung Gar in Sichuan.

How Sky burial is kept

After a death, prayers may be said near the body, and ceremonies sometimes begin a day earlier, with juniper burnt as incense. The corpse is carried, often on a yak, to a charnel ground on high ground. There the rogyapas, or body-breakers, cut and divide it, and witnesses say they work without solemnity, talking as at any other job. Vultures take the flesh. The bones that remain are broken with mallets, ground with tsampa and left for crows and hawks. Relatives may wait nearby, out of direct view. A lama or a tokden may oversee the rite.

When and where

There is no set date. A sky burial follows a death, and the body is usually brought to the charnel ground in the early morning, with some ceremonies held the day before. Tibetan teachers treat both sky burial and cremation as lessons on how impermanent life is.

The rite belongs to Tibet and to the Tibetan regions of Qinghai, Sichuan and Inner Mongolia. It is also kept in Mongolia, Nepal, Bhutan, and in Indian areas such as Sikkim and Zanskar. Drigung Monastery is named among the three most important sites. A charnel ground sits on flat, high rock, always above the land around it, and some have temples or stupas.

What Sky burial means

For Tibetan Buddhists the rite is an act of giving. The dead person, and the family left behind, feed other living beings, and generosity of that kind is a Buddhist virtue. The body itself is understood as an empty vessel once life has gone, so there is nothing to preserve. Some outside observers think the aim is to join the dead person with the sky, but Tibetan accounts do not support that reading. Teachers point to the rite as a lesson in impermanence.

Questions people ask about Sky burial

See also

AntyestiThe traditional Hindu funeral ceremony and final rite of passageFuneralThe ceremony a community holds when someone dies, from burial to cremationChinese funeral ritualsTraditional rites of mourning, vigils, offerings, and ancestor veneration across ChinaIkatA resist-dyeing craft from Southeast Asia, where yarns are tied and dyed before weaving

Good reading and sources

• BBC - ReligionsBBC, Article
• BBC - ReligionsBBC, Article

• Sky burial on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• More photos on Wikimedia CommonsPhotos and video
• Wikidata recordOpen data

It may contain mistakes. Traditions differ from one family, village and community to the next, and the people who keep them know them best. If something is wrong, tell us. Last refreshed 2026-10-05.