THENI, June 11 -- The director who carried Tamil cinema out of the studio and into the village was returned to his own soil on Thursday. Bharathiraja was buried with full state honours at his farmhouse near Vathalagundu in Theni district in the afternoon, a day after his death in Chennai at 84, with a police gun salute sounding over the fields he had chosen as his resting place.

The Tamil Nadu government accorded the honours, and a state minister laid a wreath on its behalf, Tamil language outlets including News18 Tamil and Oneindia Tamil reported from the site. The body had been flown from Chennai in the morning and taken in procession through Theni, where crowds lined the route.

The mourners at the farm measured the breadth of the man...