Loredana-Maria ILIN-GROZOIU
3rd Degree Scientific Researcher, PhD., “C.S. Nicolăescu-Plopşor” Institute for Research in Social Studies and Humanities from Craiova, of the Romanian Academy;
E-mail: lorelayy2007@yahoo.com.
Abstract
The ritual manifestations that accompany the funeral, carried out within the traditional community, have been referred to, in the specialised literature, as passing rites. The rites, the gestures, the customs, along with the funerary ritual texts, strictly transmitted from one generation to another, prove their own signification, as much as they are related to a transcendent reality.
In this context, they play their polyvalent roles, on one side, by assuring the separation of the soul by the world of the living, and its aggregation into that of the ancestors, and, on the other side, through the fact that they reinstall the temporary equilibrium state that has been lost through death. In the present study there have been pointed out the most significant contributions of the theme, based on ethnographic and anthropologic researches, which have been carried out since the second half of the 19th century.
Keywords
historiography, funerary ceremony, Song of the Dawn, Oltenia,post-existence.