ANCESTOR WORSHIP

any of a variety of religious beliefs and practices concerned with the spirits of dead persons regarded as relatives. Ancestor worship, though not so nearly universal as tendance and fear of spirits of the dead, occurs in widely distributed cultures. It is prevalent in preliterate societies of Africa, Asia, and the Pacific area; existed among the ancient Mediterranean peoples and the peoples of ancient Europe; and is manifest in Asian cultures, particularly in India, China, and Japan. In cultures that practice ancestor worship the living and the dead are as much related as any other two classes of a given community, for death does not make a person cease to belong to his social unit (family, clan, tribe, village, nation). The dead may be regarded as friendly, as kindred beings with whom kindly relations are possible; or they may be for a time displeased and angry with their people, but such displeasure may be dispelled when proper respect, reverence, and worship are manifest. Worship directed toward ancestors, who are believed to possess such powers as those just suggested, is of several types. The dead may be worshiped by an entire groupfamily, clan, tribe, or nationof which they were members while living. Such communal worship was manifest in the Roman cult of the manes or the cult of the parentum, which involved the tendance of all the dead of a particular family line. The dead individual as such was not the object of worship, but rather the life force or genius of the family or clan. More prevalent is the worship of individual ancestors, which may be combined in various ways with communal worship, as in the Roman emperor cult, Egyptian worship of ancestral rulers, and Japanese worship of members of the imperial household. Not all ancestors are equally worthy of worship, for some are regarded as being more powerful than others. Ordinary members of a group, when dead, are tended only by their immediate relatives or perhaps not at all or not for very long, while the spirits of great personages become the focus for more elaborate cultic expression by an entire community. Seniority as well as prominence may have brought about the emergence of a dead person to the rank of a worshipful ancestor. The founder of a family, for example, may be worshiped by that family for an indeterminate number of generations. Some one ancestor may so combine in his image all the worshipful qualities desired in a worthy ancestor, or show such preeminence in some one quality, that he is no longer treated as a departed spirit but is given the status of a god. An apparent example is Asclepius, who was worshiped in many parts of ancient Greece as a god but was also spoken of as a hero, with a cultic clan (known as the Asclepiadae, a guild of physicians) committed to revere him. Ancestral spirits may be called upon to assist the community of the living in many ways: to assure the continuation of the line; to avert illness or plague; to assist in the obtaining of good crops (in many cultures ancestors are viewed as living in the ground); and to intercede with gods, since they are associated with gods and often are viewed as living in the sky or in the abode of the deities. There is almost nothing that an ancestral spirit may not be called upon to grant or to avert. Generally, the relation of ancestral spirits to gods is that of inferior to superior, but they are commonly viewed as having a larger share of divine favour than the living. any of a variety of religious beliefs and practices concerned with the spirits of dead persons regarded as relatives, some of whom may be mythical. Although far from universal, ancestor worship exists or formerly existed in societies at every level of cultural development. Additional reading J.T. Addison, Chinese Ancestor Worship (1925), descriptive information on traditional practices in China; E. Bendann, Death Customs (1930, reprinted 1969), descriptive material useful in distinguishing between death cults and ancestor worship; R.F. Fortune, Manus Religion (1935, reprinted 1965), a detailed account, including information on the role of ancestor worship as a sanction for ethical behaviour; J.G. Frazer, The Belief in Immortality and Worship of the Dead, 3 vol. (191324, reprinted 1968), a classic work presenting extensive information on its subject among societies of the world; J.R. Goody, Death, Property and the Ancestors (1962), a detailed account of mortuary customs of the Lodagaa of West Africa; B. Malinowski, Baloma, the Spirits of the Dead in the Trobriand Islands, in Magic, Science and Religion and Other Essays (1948).