Nearly 4,000 villagers from Darawari in Madhya Pradesh’s Rajgarh district came together on Wednesday to host a mrityu bhoj (funeral feast) for a monkey they believed was an incarnation of Lord Hanuman.

The monkey had died 12 days earlier after touching a high-tension power line.

According to an IANS report, the villagers treated the monkey’s death with the same respect given to a human family member. On 8 November, they decorated its bier, played music during the procession, and later performed a full Hindu cremation at Shanti Dham.

After the cremation, the village’s Patel, Biram Singh Sondhiya, and others travelled to Ujjain to immerse the ashes in the Shipra River. Priests guided every step of the ceremony, including symbolic customs such as shaving the “beard” and performing the eleventh-day rites, just like in traditional human funerals.

Once the ashes were immersed, the villagers organised a large mrityu bhoj on the twelfth day. The community raised nearly ₹1 lakh for the feast. Preparations included:

  • Puris made from around five quintals of flour

  • 40 kg of sev

  • Curries using 100 litres of buttermilk

  • 1 quintal of sugar

  • Several vegetarian dishes

Invitations went out to nearby villages, and people travelled from 30–35 km away to take part.

Similar incident in 2021

This is not the first time such rituals have taken place in the district. In 2021, residents of Dalupura village organised a mass feast for about 1,500 people after a langur died from the cold. Villagers performed a full funeral procession and cremation.

“It is a custom in our village that if a monkey dies here, then all residents get together to perform funerary rituals that are done for any human being. The ‘mrityu bhoj’ took place on Friday, and 1,500 people attended,” Arjun Singh Chouhan, former sarpanch of Dalupura, told PTI.

PTI noted that villagers consider monkeys to be incarnations of Lord Hanuman, a belief that leads to them being treated with deep respect in many rural parts of India.