This volume aims at surveying how various cultures (tribal, regional and pan-Indian) of South Asia come to terms with this horizon of dying, death and the dead. It combines the ethnographic point of view that stresses the social and ritual forms related to death, and the conceptual aspects which favour the idea of an agency of texts. The contributions have been organized in three sections: the first section deals with the ‘good’ death, the second with ‘untimely’ or ‘extraordinary’ death and the third focuses on the interpretation of the theme of death in textual traditions and on how death is portrayed in various cultural performances.