A slight clarification here. There are memorial markers/stupas on Mt.
Koya for famous figures from throughout Japanese history, but it's not
clear whether there are many remains of *Heian era* figures there. Mt.
Koya doesn't become a pilgrimage destination of any significance until
nearly 1100, and even then it probably would have been only one of a
number of places where the remains of a deceased might have been
interred--and a rather unlikely one at that, given the multi-day journey
required. I guess the provenance of the Mt. Koya graveyard needs proper
study, but my sense is that it seems older than it really is.
___________________________
William Londo Ph.D.
grbounce-guhZswUAAABrg6gy759VnZYK9L5ZK7Pc=wfl=
myreal...@googlegroups.com
wrote:
>
> I apologize for not having the time to search for greater details, but
> from all that I have read, both cremation and burial were practiced in
> the Heian period. There were two cremation sites near the capital; one
> was Toribeno, in the south-east on the other side of the Kamo River, and
> the other somewhere in the north-west. The good families would have had
> their relatives cremated. The really grand families, like the Fujiwara
> nobles, had the remains collected and deposited at special temples. I
> recall that many remains of the great are, for example, at Mt. Koya.
>
> Provincial noble families apparently also had burial tombs.
>
> The poor most likely would have resorted to burial in the ground. The
> abandoning of corpses along highways and the river banks seems to have
> marked times of disaster (starvation and smallpox).
>
> I. J. Parker
>
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