Ritual Mourning: A Cross-Cultural Comparison.

The article presents two instances of ritualized mourning that were examined as examples of crowd behavior. One of these was a Holy Week observance described for Tzintzuntzan, Mexico, while the other was the funeral complex of a small town in southeast Luzon, Philippines. It was hypothesized on this slim basis that crowd behavior was characterized by culturally recognized stimuli, selective response, and the peculiarity of the crowd situation. Among the Toda the placing of the body of the deceased in the hut or diary is the signal for female relatives and friends of the dead person to gather around the structure to lament together in the characteristic Toda manner arranging themselves in pairs and pressing their foreheads together while they wail and weep. Again it is the placing of the corpse by the head of an expiring buffalo that brings the Toda to surround the two bodies and lament in the same vigorous fashion. Among the Brahmans, silence is prescribed for the first half-hour after death. Furthermore after the burning of the body on the funeral pyre, the members of the funeral party sit outside the house of the dead person and weep till the new head of the house gives them permission to leave.