Shradh in North India and Bengal: How the Rites Differ

In North India and Bengal the shradh rests on the same core as elsewhere - the death tithi, the midday hours, pindas, tarpan and the feeding of guests - but the calendar it is read from, the texts it is decided by, and the customs around it differ. Hindi-belt homes name their months by the full moon, set aside five portions of food for the cow, dog, crow, gods and ants, and often have the Garuda Purana read in the days after a death. Bengali homes decide their rites by Raghunandana's rules, keep a mourning period whose length depends on the community, and take their dates from one of two schools of almanac. For the ceremony in general, see our shraddha ceremony guide.

What is shared almost everywhere

• The tithi. The annual shradh falls on the lunar day of death, and Pitru Paksha gives every tithi a day in the fortnight before Navratri. (Some Kerala families go by the nakshatra of death instead.)
• The hours. The rite belongs to late midday and the afternoon. North Indian panchangs print the window as kutup and rohina muhurat, the eighth and ninth of the day's fifteen muhurtas, as the Dharmasindhu counts them.
• Pindas, tarpan and guests. Offerings of rice or, in many North Indian homes, barley flour; water with sesame; and food for brahmins or the needy. Our tarpan guide covers the water offering.

North India: the Hindi belt

The month names run one ahead

North Indian panchangs end the lunar month at the full moon (purnimanta), so for the dark fortnight the month name is one ahead of the name used in Karnataka, Maharashtra, Gujarat and the Telugu states. Pitru Paksha is "Ashwin Krishna" in a Delhi or Varanasi panchang and "Bhadrapada Krishna" in a Bengaluru one, the same fifteen days. The tithi number never changes, only the month label, so a household that moves between North and South has to translate the death tithi rather than copy it. Our guide to a shraddha missed or looked for in the wrong month explains how.

Panchbali: five portions before anyone eats

In Hindi-speaking homes, before the brahmins or the family eat, five portions of the shradh food are set aside, the panchbali:

• Gau bali - for the cow
• Shvan bali - for the dog
• Kak bali - for the crow, usually placed on the roof or a wall
• Devadi bali - for the gods
• Pipilika bali - for ants, placed on clean ground

Southern households feed the crow; the North's five-fold form carries the same idea further, that the ancestors' meal is shared with every kind of living being before the family takes its own.

Brahmin bhoj, or sidha

The traditional form feeds brahmins in the place of the ancestors (brahmin bhoj). Where that is not possible, many North Indian homes give sidha (also written seedha): uncooked provisions such as flour, rice, dal, ghee and vegetables, with dakshina. The texts call this ama shraddha; our guide to the smaller forms when a full shraddha cannot be done covers it.

The Garuda Purana and the thirteenth day

In many North Indian homes a pandit reads the Garuda Purana aloud during the 13 days after a death, ending with the terahvin, the thirteenth-day rite and meal. The text explains what the rites of those days are for, which is why it is read then, and why some households avoid reading it at other times.

Gaya

For Hindi-belt households, a shradh at Gaya in Bihar is the great act for the ancestors: pind daan at the Vishnupad temple and along the Phalgu river, conducted by the hereditary priests of Gaya, who also keep family registers going back generations. Families are told different things about what follows. One view is that a parent's annual shradh continues for life; others, including many at Gaya itself, teach that a Gaya shradh completes it. Follow your family purohit.

Bengal

Raghunandana's rules

Bengal decides its rites by its own Smriti authorities: Raghunandana's Shraddhatattva (16th century) and Shulapani's Shraddhaviveka. The encyclopaedia Banglapedia names these two as the texts Bengali households treat as authoritative on shraddha, so a Bengali purohit's answers to "how is it done in our family" come from them rather than from the Dharmasindhu used in the West and South.

The first shraddha and the mourning period

Banglapedia lists three kinds of shraddha in Bengali practice: the adya shraddha (the first, after a death), the abhyudayika or vriddhi shraddha (performed before an auspicious event such as a wedding), and sapindikarana, which joins the departed to the ancestors. The adya shraddha is held when the family's period of ritual impurity ends, which lasts from 10 to 30 days depending on the community, so the shraddha falls between the 11th and the 31st day; your purohit will know which applies. Through that period the close relatives eat habishyi (havishyanna), the mourner's food: simple vegetarian dishes and sun-dried (atap) rice without salt. In many families the day after the shraddha is niyombhanga, also called matsyamukhi, when the family returns to its everyday food, fish included.

Two schools of almanac

Bengali households take their tithis from a panjika, and there are two schools:

• Gupta Press and similar panjikas compute in the old way, from the Surya Siddhanta, and follow Raghunandana's rules for festivals.
• The Bisuddha Siddhanta panjika, first published in 1890 by Madhab Chandra Chattopadhyay, corrected the planetary positions to match the observed sky.

Belur Math and the Ramakrishna Mission follow the Bisuddha Siddhanta; some community pujas follow Gupta Press. Because the two can place a tithi differently, they occasionally put a festival, or a shraddha tithi, on different days. For a family shraddha, follow the panjika your household has always used.

Mahalaya morning

Mahalaya Amavasya, the last day of Pitru Paksha, is when crowds gather at the Ganga ghats in Kolkata for tarpan, the start of the season that leads into Durga Puja.

What to tell your purohit

• Where your family comes from, not just where you live: a Bengali family in Bengaluru follows Bengali practice and a Bengali panjika.
• The tithi, with the month name and which convention it uses (full-moon or new-moon months), or simply the date of death, so he can work it out.
• Which panjika, for a Bengali household, if you know it.
• The form: brahmin bhoj, sidha, or a smaller rite.

Other traditions keep the same day with their own emphases: see the Smartha shraddha step by step, the Madhva shraddha and the Iyengar srardham. For a purohit who follows your family's practice, request a purohit for the shradh.