A Fortnight for the Forefathers
- In Religion
- 10:21 AM, Aug 16, 2018
- Richa Yadav
My soul wants to fly away
when your presence calls it so sweetly.
My soul wants to take flight,
when you whisper, “Arise.”
The famous couplet talks about the flight the divine soul is ready to take when called upon with true desire. Is it just a poet’s figment of imagination? Certainly not! The entire Hindu psyche is built on this idea of soul, the inner being. This world is ephemeral and so are the human bodies, but what we all have within is the immortal, the soul. And so are our connections with the souls of our ancestors; they define who we are today! Therefore, Hindus dedicate a whole fortnight to remember and express their gratitude to their dead parents and ancestors. This fortnight is called ‘Pitra paksh’ when people offer customary oblations i.e. ‘tarpan’ or ‘shradh’ to the departed souls. This fortnight, exclusively reserved for paying homage to the ancestors starts on a full moon day and ends on a no moon day, also known as the ‘poornima and amavasya’ respectively. It is believed that during this time, the heavenly souls descend on earth to accept the offerings given to them by their progeny.
The rituals performed by Hindus during this time of the year may differ from region to region but are mostly performed by any the eldest male member in the family in one’s own house, in an open space like fields, temples or at the river banks; it is performed for paternal side as well as the maternal side of grandparents. One day is specifically ascertained for female ancestors esp mothers, which is called ‘matra naumi’. During these days people keep fast, offer donations of food (esp ‘Pindadan’ or the offering of ‘pinda’ or rice balls), new clothes, scrumptious meals, sweets, and money. Also, it is a popular custom to feed crows, cows, and dogs on this day with the belief that the food eaten by them reach the ancestors.
It is said that if you fail to offer water and food to the ancestors in the pitra paksha, then in the afterlife you will also remain without food and water. According to one of the Mahabharat stories even, Karna, the most well-known for his generosity, had to suffer hunger in his afterlife. After death when Karna reached heaven, he was offered only gold to eat as a meal! “How could gold satiate my hunger?”, he questioned. Then he was told that as he never donated food to hungry people on earth, and only gave away gold and gems, so he deserved nothing but gold in return. Karna realized his mistake of never offering food to the poor and his ancestors. To condone his mistake Karna took special permission to get back to earth for sixteen days and feed the poor and the needy. Hence, a fortnight for everyone to reconnect with their own ancestral ties.
Hindu Puranas are full of details about offerings made to the ancestors. The Matsyapurana (XIX) explains that the offerings reach the ancestors in a form suitable to their form of existence as nectar for those born as devas, as grass for those born as beasts, as grain for those born as human beings. It has also been widely mentioned in the Hindu epics like Ramayana and Mahabharat. Ram went to Gaya, Bihar to perform his ancestral rites. The Visnupada Temple, situated on the bank of the river Phalgu, a tributary of the Ganges in Gaya, is a stone structure built in 1766 by the Maratha Queen Ahalyabai Holkar. It is considered one of the most important places for Hindus for performing shradh ceremony. In colloquial language, ‘going to Gaya’ euphemistically means someone passed away in the family.
Common Hindus had been continuing the tradition in their way. Recently, a friend was sadly mentioned that her eighty-five years old father is always reluctant to visit her in the USA because he is so particular about performing ‘sharadh’ rituals for all those who had passed on in his family ; missing on her kids, the future, for the sake of the dead! I too recall an incident; the very next day of my grandfather’s death; I saw my grandmother going quietly on the terrace. She rarely climbed steps, so I followed her. She asked me to get a marble ‘chakla’, a flat stone plate used for rolling chapati, a big steel strainer, and some flour. I tried to read her facial expressions in the moonlight. Clueless. She looked at the sky, murmured something, set the chakla, and spread some flour on it evenly, and covered it with the strainer. Next morning, she gently removed the strainer, stared at the flour spread on the stone which has been slightly ruffled, then muttered to herself, ‘he is a bird in the next birth’. After enormous cajoling she told me that it was believed that the shape the flour takes overnight, reflects which body did a person takes in the next birth. ‘Another superstition’, I shrugged off.
However, now when I reflect, I realize that these are the crooked, half-baked connections people make with such deep concept of ‘soul and afterlife’. It is an example of the flight of a common man’s rationale from what our scriptures convey based on experiential knowledge of learned ancestors. Incomprehensible, crude, yet that is the way common people understand these Hindu ideas and adapt as rituals in their own lives and pass on from one generation to another.
In today’s technological world, doing earthly rituals for ancestors might not make a tangible appeal to us in general, yet it can make a world of difference to the individual offering gratitude to his lineage. Reconnecting with one’s forebearers gives one an excellent opportunity to reflect on the spiritual journey of self which begins with little deeds, feelings, and thoughts.
Reference
1 Debjani Paul. Antiquity of the Viṣṇupāda at Gaya Tradition and Archaeology. East and West, Vol. 35, No. 1/3 (September 1985), pp. 103. Istituto Italiano per l'Africa e l'Oriente (IsIAO).
2 Y. Krishan. The Doctrine of Karma and Sraddhas. Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Vol. 66, No. 1/4 (1985), pp. 97-115 Published by: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute.
Comments