At the 1974 funeral of an important religious figure in the vicinity of Phan Rang, mourners carry the corpse to the cremation ground. Musèe de l'Homme

For the Hindu Cham people of the coast of central Vietnam, descendants of the ancient Champa kingdom, the funeral is an elaborate ritual that begins when the deceased draws a last breath. The corpse is given water through the mouth, washed, shrouded and served a ritual meal. A carefully selected tree is cut and used for the coffin, which is taken to the cremation ground on a richly decorated bier. There, both bier and coffin are placed on a funeral pyre.

Retrieved from the pyre, bone fragments are placed in a ceramic container to await reburial. Le Dui Dai / Vietnam Museum of Ethnology

Later, some bones are removed and placed in a small box for reburial. Descendants of the same ancestral grandmother rebury their dead together in their common cemetery on an auspicious date. The remains of five to ten members of the same lineage may be interred in the same ceremony. Today, some Cham communities are Muslim with their own distinctive funeral rites.