> [[cohen]]. "The Substitute Guests: Feeding Ancestors at the Indo-European Funeral Meal". Article presented at [[iacm14]]. > #nofreepdf > #donthave > #link ## Abstract > This paper explores the ritual feeding of guests at the funeral meal attested in ancient Indo-European cultures. I will discuss the feeding of Brahman guests at the monthly Hindu *śrāddha* ritual, the feeding of ancestors through gifts of food to monks as described in the Buddhist Pali text *Petavatthu*, the ancient Greek ritual of *perideipnon*, the Norse *erfi*, the *averil* meal of the British Isles, and the old English custom of *sinne-eating*. I argue that the feeding of living guests is also a symbolic feeding of the ancestors in all these cases, but that the larger significance of this ritual is very different in each of the societies involved. While the Hindu and Buddhist ceremonial feedings are concerned with ritual purity and *karma* transfer, the *perideipnon* stresses the ritual performance of hospitality, the *erfi* the social recognition of the dead man’s legitimate heir, the *averil* the warding off of threats from the lingering dead, and the custom of *sinne-eating* the maintenance of social hierarchy through the ritual transfer of sins to a pauper. I will discuss the theoretical implications of these local differences in the interpretation of the inherited Indo-European ritual for our larger collective project of comparative mythology. In their seminal work, *A Magic Still Dwells: Comparative Religion in the Postmodern Age* (2000), Kimberly Patton, Benjamin Ray, and their colleagues argue for a form of religious comparison that pays attention to differences as well as similarities, and to cultural context as much as shared origin. In this paper, I intend to show that this approach is fruitful in comparative Indo-European mythology as well.