Members of Sawang
organizations in Pattaya and Ratchaburi perform the grave cleaning for
corpses without relatives ceremony in Pattaya.
Surasak Huasoon
About 200 members of Sawang organizations in Pattaya and
Ratchaburi dug up Pattaya graveyard internees without families to clean
bones and prepare them for a Buddhist cremation ceremony.
Sawang Boriboon Thammasathan Foundation President Visit
Chaowalitnittithum and top officers welcomed Somchai Wetchawithun,
president of the Sawang Ratchaburi Foundation and members to the Soi
Siam Country Club cemetery for the March 7 cleanup, the fifth performed
in 40 days by the central Thailand organization around the kingdom.
The ceremony included believers bowing before the corpses and praying to
spirits. It also gave some who didn’t realize they had family in the
graveyard an opportunity to properly bury their relatives.
The grave-cleaning ceremony originated from China and spread to
Thailand. Legend purports that China had suffered flooding followed by
an epidemic, leading to villagers falling ill and dying.
However, there was one monk, Taihongkong, who did not abhor the dead
bodies and elicited living relatives to search for dead bodies to
perform funeral rites sending their souls at peace. This act was spread
far and wide, thus, it was passed on to the following generation, who
considered this act as a beautiful act of humanity becoming what is
known today as grave cleaning for corpses without relatives.
During grave cleaning, attendees must not under any circumstances
comment to its smell and must not spit; these prohibitions have been
passed on till today. For this grave cleaning, Sawang Ratchaburi
Foundation dug up over 100 male and female graves for funeral rites.
