Paper short abstract:

The paper analyzes the traditional funeral dance of the Lanjia Saoras, an indigenous group of Osidha (India). Deprived of its original religious significance, this performance has now become a mediatic means through which emphasize the vanishing identity of a marginalized tribe.

Paper long abstract:

This article documents a case of shamanic possession during a funeral ritual among the Lanjia Saoras of Odisha (dist. Rayagada). The approach is both ethnographic and linguistic as we introduce the translation (from Sora, Munda family group) of a traditional liturgy and a dialogue with the spirits aimed at reconnecting the community with the ancestral land. The funeral dance, a kind of itinerant procession covering the sacred sites of the village and its surroundings, consecrates the renewal of the alliance between the living and the dead. The article wants to highlight the contrast between the traditional ritual gestures and the contemporary performances held in occasion of the capital's tribal festival (Adivasi Mela), where these dances are repeated ad infinitum devoid of their original religious meaning. The funeral dance, proudly displayed in traditional costumes by indigenous delegations that come to the metropolis (Bhubaneswar), it is almost a cry of despair, a yearning for identity of an Adivasi culture that is now fastly disappearing.