ZBORNIK - Matica srpska

with Pythagoras and his followers. As a corollary to the belief in
after-life, there is the desire to communicate with the departed. It
has been thought that they can protect, bless, curse or even help the
living to perform some of the social functions which they did while
they were alive. Thus, the duty of the living towards the dead has
been a regular affair. The ritual of their propitiation has been sometimes
daily, at other times held on marked days like the Anthesteria,
or it has been observed on personal dates like the sraddha in pitripaksha.
6
In the lives of Indo-Europeans the presence of ancestors was a
continuous reality. If the body is looked upon as not the only but
just one of manifestation of being, then the non-corporeal manifestation
of existence, called the eidolon or sukshma sharira, can be
present in space and time which are not material. The ancestors in
this way can possess the same quality as gods do, namely, that of
being free of clock-time and earthly space. They can, like the gods,
be invoked to assist, bless or interfere in the daily affairs of men.
They are endowed with semi-godhood which while offering protection
can also promote cohesion in the family, phratry and genos or
gotra. 7 As compared with the divine the relationship between the
individual and the pitris is more intimate and emotionally strong as
it is a conversion of a once very worldly attachment into an other-
-worldly bond. In ancient drama this feeling for ancestors is more
extensively depicted than the relationship between man and Divine.
In Greek drama burial rituals and worship at tombs become a
part of the dramatic action itself. Such instances are rare in Indian
plays. Libations of water by Yudhishthira to supposedly dead brothers
in 'Venisamhara' are an exception. in the Greek tragic muthoi
the frequency of thanatological ritual on stage is accounted for by
the culture pattern of desecration and prevention of burial. It was
not simply war vendetta which encouraged desecration but a faith
that the prevention of rites of passage shall weaken the opponent
and his successors. 8 On the contrary, in India antyeshti has been
considered to be too sacred to be disturbed. The dying man is regarded
as beyond the pale of animosity and there is the culture pattern
of even seeking his advice. Bhishma's death-sermon epitomises
this norm. When depicted in drama this pattern also promotes a
peacefulness lessening of the pangs of horror. It was under this spirit
that the dying hero of Bhasa's 'Urubhanga' is made to give up
his life-long hatred for Pandavas. On the other hand in the Greek
tragic world horror is intensified by the victor's demand for ransom
for desecrated body of the vanquished. The fury of the desecrater is
a mark of his heroic wrath and the plaint of the relatives of the
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