Особености на обредите при погребението на деца у южните славяни в края на XIX и началото на XX в.
Specificities of the funerary rites for children among the Southern Slavs in the late 19th and early 20th century

Summary/Abstract: The article examines some of the more common specificities in the rites and customs connected with the death and burial of children, existing among the Southern Slavs in the late 19th and early 20th century. The changes in the composition, structure and functions of the rituals, compared with the "basic" variant, are explained with the children's low social status, as compared with the status of adult deceased presons, and they reflect the specificities of their "transition" to the "other world". These changes are manifested in several ways: 1) a number of elements are transformed in order to confirm the specific status of the children at the level of signs; 2) the rituals are reduced in duration and in composition, with a changed correlation between the three principal phases of the "transition" (separation — passage — communion). Thus, for example, the separation rites are almost totally eliminated in connection with the traditional beliefs that, due to the lack of stable social links with the world of the living, children were separated from it more easily than adults. The communion rites were also reduced, because the low social status of the children prevented them from being accepted as community members enjoying equal rights as the patron-ancestors, nor could they undertake their functions; 3) at the same time, special emphasis is laid in the rites and rituals on elements of a life-asserting and reproducing nature, so as to guarantee the children's development after death in "the other world", or to create conditions for their reincarnation in the world of the living, which was perceived mainly as a means of guaranteeing a viable progeny to their parents. Irrespective of the existence of certain differences in the funerary rites for children as a whole, nevertheless Southern Slav elements predominated.

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