What time of day is the rite performed?
The ancestral rites are kept for a set part of the day, aparahna kaal, roughly midday to mid-afternoon. Its clock hours are not fixed. The priest finds them from the panchang, for the day and the place. This page says how, and which place's window governs when the family is elsewhere.
अपराह्ण कालaparahna kaal
the part of the day, roughly midday to mid-afternoon, kept for the ancestral rites
Table of contents
Section I
Is there a set time the rite happens?
Yes. The ancestral rites are kept for a set part of the day, अपराह्ण काल aparahna kaal, roughly midday to mid-afternoon. It is not the whole day, and it is not one fixed hour either: it is the window the rite belongs to, and the priest sets the exact time within it.
Section II
How is the window found, and why this part of the day?
From the पञ्चाङ्ग panchang, the Hindu calendar of tithis, for that day and that place. Aparahna kaal is not read off an ordinary clock. Its hours are worked out afresh for the day and the place rather than fixed on the calendar, and they are not the same from one date to the next. Within the window the priest may set a मुहूर्त muhurat, a time chosen from the panchang as particularly right for the rite. By tradition the day is kept in several such parts, each set aside for its own kind of rite, and aparahna kaal is the one kept for the ancestral rites.
Section III
Which place’s window governs, when the family is elsewhere?
Ramkund’s own. A तीर्थ tirtha is a place of pilgrimage, and in the oldest sense a crossing place on a river. Ramkund at Nashik is a tirtha for the ancestral rites, and the rite there is performed within the aparahna kaal at Ramkund, found for that place. A family that is elsewhere is often in a different part of the day itself. It is Ramkund’s own window the priest works to, not wherever the family is.
Section IV
Does the family need to know or agree on a time?
No. What the priest needs is the day itself: the तिथि tithi of the death, the day of the lunar calendar it fell on, if it is known, or that it is not. He finds the window and sets the exact time within it himself. Nothing about the hour is the family’s to work out or state.
Section V
Explore more guides
What is Pitru Paksha?
The fortnight the rite is kept in, when it falls by the lunar calendar, and how the priest finds a day within it from the panchang.
Shraddh from abroad
How the rite is performed by a qualified priest at Ramkund for a family that cannot be present.
Who performs a shraddh?
What the priest needs to know before the rite begins, and what he works out himself.
Glossary of the ancestral rites
Aparahna kaal, muhurat, panchang and the other words of when the rites are performed, each in Devanagari with a plain meaning.
Section VI