Idital (the Guardian Ancestor-Icon)
Sora · numen · Sora traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
The idital is both a guardian ancestor-sonum and the famous Sora ritual wall-painting that houses it; the ittalmaran (icon-specialist) makes the painting to settle the dead and protect the living.
Domains
- ancestral guardianship
Powers
- to guard the household and village from the wall-icon
Sources
- Idital is the Sora ancestral guardian-spirit made present in the painted wall-icon that bears its name.: Piers Vitebsky, Dialogues with the Dead: The Discussion of Mortality among the Sora of Eastern India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). (secondary); Verrier Elwin, The Religion of an Indian Tribe (London: Oxford University Press, 1955). (secondary)