What is asthi visarjan?
Asthi visarjan is the giving of the ash and bone gathered after a cremation to the water at a tirtha. This page says what the word means, where the rite sits among the rites for the dead, and where it is performed.
अस्थि विसर्जनasthi visarjan
the immersion of the ash and bone gathered after a cremation
Table of contents
Practice varies
Families and regions keep the rite in different ways. Which tirtha the immersion is made at, and how soon after the cremation, is what a family keeps. The family tells the priest at the place, and he performs it as they keep it.
Section I
What is given to the water in asthi visarjan?
What is gathered after a cremation. अस्थि asthi is the ash and bone left when the body has been burnt, gathered afterwards from the place of the cremation. विसर्जन visarjan is the letting go of something into water. The rite is the two words together.
The immersion is made at a तीर्थ tirtha, a place of pilgrimage, and in the oldest sense a crossing place on a river. That is why a family carries the asthi to a river rather than giving it to whatever water is nearest.
Section II
Is asthi visarjan one of the ancestral rites?
No. It belongs to the rites that follow a death, which are for the person who has just died. The ancestral rites are the ones kept afterwards, year after year. पितृ pitru is the word for a family’s own departed elders, and it is after the rites that follow a death that the departed are counted among them. A श्राद्ध shraddh, the rite performed for one’s departed ancestors, is offered to the pitru, and asthi visarjan comes before any of that.
Section III
Where is asthi visarjan performed?
At a river tirtha. At Nashik it is performed at Ramkund, a कुण्ड kund, a pool with stone sides and steps, on the Godavari. Ramkund holds the tirtha where this rite is performed, called Asthi Vilaya Tirtha, the place where the bones dissolve. Families bring what was gathered after the cremation of their dead to Ramkund and give it to the water there.
Section IV
Explore more guides
What is shraddh?
The rite a family keeps for its dead year after year, who it is for, when it falls, and what is offered in it.
What is pind daan?
The offering of pinda within a shraddh, what a pinda is made of, and where the offering is made.
Gaya and Nashik
What the tradition records Gaya for and what it records Nashik for, and the turn the Godavari makes at Ramkund.
Ramkund
The pool on the Godavari at Panchavati that holds the Asthi Vilaya Tirtha, and what Nashik tells of it.
Section V