Death in the Conception of the Arems

Abstract

The Arems is a local group of the Chuts speaking Viet-Muong language, living concentrated in a single village, previously called Ta Ket village, but at present it is called hamlet 39, belonging to Bo Trach district, Quang Binh province. The population in 2002 is 132 inhabitants. Their socio-economical life is enduring many difficulties, but this ethnic group has preserved a strict and complex system of rites, conceptions on the life and world, especially the system of rituals on death. The Arems think that human beings and everything have two parts: a Soul and a Body. Human life begins when a person is born, and ends when he dies. Death is the date when his soul leaves off his body. When a person leaves off the world of human living to pass to the world of Ghosts, never he is born again. In their conception, there are a good death and a bad death. The sorcerer is the person who wields power over ghosts. Relations between the world of human beings and the world of Spirits, between the world of Spirits and that of Ghost are understood in a simple manner without clear-cut distinctions. Funeral rituals create a complicated ritual system. In the daily life, they have many ways of treating illnesses to prevent ghosts from taking off the human life. The proportion of dead person among this ethnic group is yet fairly great. This reality needs the concern of different government levels of the Center as well as of the locality. Full text in Vietnamese Religious Studies 2005/5 pp.43-52