What is Gaya kept for, and what is Nashik?
Families ask which of the two places the rites for their dead belong at. This page says what the tradition records each one for, what the Garuda Purana has on Gaya, and what does and does not change when the rite moves from one tirtha to another.
तीर्थtirtha
a place of pilgrimage, and in the oldest sense a crossing place on a river
Table of contents
Practice varies
Families and regions keep the rite in different ways. Which tirtha a family goes to is what that family keeps.
Section I
What is Gaya kept for?
The rites for the father. A तीर्थ tirtha is a place of pilgrimage, and in the oldest sense a crossing place on a river. Gaya is one, and by tradition it is the tirtha kept for a father’s rites. That is what families travel there for.
The Garuda Purana carries its own account of Gaya. It gives the story of how the place became holy, names the bathing pools within it, and has the श्राद्ध shraddh, the rite performed for one’s departed ancestors, made there for the dead of a family.
Section II
What is Nashik kept for?
The rites for the mother. By a belief long held among families of northern India, a mother’s rites belong at Ramkund on the Godavari at Nashik.
Ramkund stands where the Godavari turns to the south as it comes into Nashik, and tradition holds that the turn to the south gives the water along that stretch a standing of its own. At Ramkund the rites are performed through the year.
Section III
What changes when the place changes?
The order the priest follows, and not the family’s own part in it. The सङ्कल्प sankalp, the declaration in which the priest states out loud who is making the offering, for whom, where, and on what day, names the same यजमान yajaman, the person in whose name the rite is made, and the same गोत्र gotra, the family line passed down from father to son, at one tirtha as at the other. The dead named are the family’s own either way.
What differs is the विधि vidhi, the order in which a rite is performed step by step, as the priest knows it. It is not the same between regions, and it is not the same between families of priests. Tell the priest whose rite it is and who it is for, and he performs it in the order he follows.
Section IV
Where else do families go?
To Varanasi on the Ganga, and to Haridwar where the river comes down onto the plain. Families have long gone to both for their dead, and both are named in the tradition alongside Gaya and Nashik.
Section V
Explore more guides
What is shraddh?
The rite itself, who it is for, when it falls, what is offered, and its order as the Garuda Purana gives it.
What is pind daan?
The offering of pinda within a shraddh, what goes into a pinda, and where the offering is made at a river tirtha.
What is asthi visarjan?
The immersion of the ash and bone gathered after a cremation, and the tirtha at Ramkund where it is performed.
Ramkund
The pool on the Godavari at Panchavati where the rites for the dead are performed, and what Nashik tells of it.
Section VI