The residents of Dalupura village in Madhya Pradesh’s Rajgarh district hosted a mass feast for some 1,500 people as part of funerary rituals of a langur that died of the cold on December 29.
They had also taken part in the funeral procession of the simian before cremating it in the traditional way amid the chanting of hymns on December 30.
A video of the ‘mrityu bhoj’ surfaced on social media on Monday.
“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 village told PTI on January 10.
The villagers consider monkeys to be the incarnation of Lord Hanuman, he had said earlier after the last rites of the langur were performed.
The langur had strayed into the village on December 29 and had fallen ill due to the cold, and died some hours later despite being taken to a veterinarian and given warm clothes.
