Head and Haunches
On the third day of bur, the “great men” (boro lok) of the village, including all the dignitaries, assemble in the sponsor’s yard again. The head and haunches (mund [1]
kulund) of the head of cattle sacrificed for the duma are cooked and eaten without rice, together with a thick millet gruel (rab).
The Last Rice
Bur ends roughly a week later, after the duma receives food offerings for the last time. The ritual is called baura bat,[2] and for the last time, the sponsors, the mo- rodandia, and the Four Brothers go to the cremation site to feed the duma, before he again receives food offerings at the house. Unlike in the previous phases of bur, no tsoru is cooked; instead, the women of the sponsors prepare rice and beef that was dried after the first day. Women and men go to the cremation site together, without stopping at the village’s ritual boundary first. The deceased’s agnatic relatives offer him cooked food; his affines merely scatter hulled rice. At the place where the deceased’s head lay on the pyre, there have accumulated countless saucers, pots, and drinking gourds left behind on the preceding days; they remain here for the duma. The women adopt their postures of mourning, and the morodandia carries out his office for the last time and begins the feeding.
After the purification at the river and at the house, betisong is performed in the house and yard, after which everyone eats together in the yard, women and men in separate rows. Neither an assembly inside the house nor the libation into a ring take place, and the mamu’s presence on this last day is unnecessary.
