What is pitru dosh, and what are the ancestral rites for?
Tradition attributes pitru dosh to the ancestors not having received their due. This page says what the tradition holds that due to be, and what it holds the ancestral rites are for. It says how the rites are performed, and what a family that asks about it tells the priest.
पितृ दोषpitru dosh
a condition tradition attributes to the ancestors not having received their due
Table of contents
Practice varies
Which rites a family keeps, and how, differs between families and between regions. Tell the priest what your family keeps for its dead, and he says what to do.
Section I
What does the tradition hold the ancestral rites are for?
For the ancestors. Tradition holds that the departed are sustained by what the living of their own line offer them, and the ancestral rites are those offerings. श्राद्ध shraddh is the rite for a family’s dead. तर्पण tarpan, the offering of water to the ancestors, is one of its parts, and by tradition the water is poured so that the ones it is poured for are satisfied by it. पिण्डदान pind daan is the other, the offering of पिण्ड pinda, balls of cooked rice, to the named ancestors. The word for the ancestors in the rite is पितृ pitru, the family’s own departed elders. The rites are kept year after year rather than once.
Section II
What is the due that pitru dosh refers to?
By tradition, the rites themselves, kept on their days. पितृ दोष pitru dosh is a condition tradition attributes to the ancestors not having received their due. Dosh is the word for a fault or a lack, and pitru is the word for the ancestors. What the living of the line owe the ancestors, the tradition holds, is what they offer them, and the days the offerings are made on are set by custom. A shraddh is kept each year on the तिथि tithi of the death, the day of the lunar calendar it fell on, and on the days of the year kept for the ancestors.
Section III
How are the ancestral rites performed for a family that asks about it?
As they are for any family. Every one of them opens with the सङ्कल्प sankalp, the declaration in which the priest states out loud who is making the offering, for whom, where, and on what day. The यजमान yajaman is the person in whose name the rite is made. His name and the family’s गोत्र gotra, the family line passed down from father to son, are spoken in it, and so are the names of the departed the rite is for. The offerings follow it.
Section IV
What does a family that asks about it do?
It tells the priest what it knows, and the rite goes ahead in the family’s name. The priest needs the gotra, the names of the departed the rite is for, how each of them was related to the yajaman, and the tithi of the death if it is known. Tell him too whether the rites have been kept in past years. A family that has not kept them for some years, or does not know whether they were kept, is not turned away. It tells the priest so, and the rite is performed for the named ancestors on the day kept for them.
The rites are performed at home and at a तीर्थ tirtha, 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 rites are performed there through the year.
Section V
Explore more guides
What is shraddh?
The whole rite the priest performs in the family's name, who it is for, when it falls, what is offered, and its order as the Garuda Purana gives it.
Who performs a shraddh?
Whose rite a shraddh is, whose duty it is by custom, what the tradition provides when he cannot carry it out, and what the priest needs to know.
What is Pitru Paksha?
The fortnight of the year kept for the ancestors, when it falls, which day a family keeps within it, and the day kept for all the ancestors together.
Glossary of the ancestral rites
Pitru dosh, sadgati, punya and the other words of what families hope for, each in Devanagari with a plain meaning.
Section VI