Sankalp: the declaration that opens the rite
Before a priest offers anything, he says who it is for. That declaration is the sankalp. This page says what it names, when it is used beyond the ancestral rites, and how its gotra differs from the one spoken later in the offering.
सङ्कल्पsankalp
The declaration that opens a rite, naming who is making the offering, for whom, where, and on what day.
Table of contents
Section I
What does a sankalp do?
सङ्कल्प sankalp is the declaration that opens a rite. Before anything is offered, the priest states out loud who is making the offering, for whom, where, and on what day. Without the sankalp the offering has no named recipient. The offering itself, water or rice, is the longer part of the rite and comes after it.
Section II
Is a sankalp only said at the ancestral rites?
No. A sankalp opens any rite performed with a priest, not only a shraddh. A wedding opens with one. So does an ordinary puja. What the priest declares changes with the rite it opens. The form of the declaration does not. At an ancestral rite the sankalp names who the offering is for among the family’s own departed, and that is the sense this page and the rest of this site use.
Section III
Whose name does the sankalp give?
The sankalp names the यजमान yajaman, the person in whose name the offering is made, by his own name. It names the family by its गोत्र gotra, the family line passed down from father to son. A family does not have a name in the sankalp. It has a gotra, and that is why the priest asks for it first. What a gotra is says more about the line itself and what happens when a family does not know theirs.
A separate phrase, “made in the family’s name”, is used elsewhere on this site for a different sense: that the rite is performed on the family’s behalf, whichever of them is or is not present. That sense is not what the sankalp itself says, and the two should not be read as the same claim.
Section IV
Is the gotra in the sankalp the same gotra spoken later in the offering?
Not always. The gotra spoken in the sankalp is the yajaman’s own line, spoken once to say who is making the offering. Tarpan names each departed ancestor in turn as the water is poured, and it is the departed’s own gotra that is spoken with each one, not the yajaman’s. By custom a rite for the mother’s own parents is performed in the gotra she was born into, not the family’s own, so the two do not always match. The sankalp opens the rite in the yajaman’s name. What is spoken for each ancestor during the offering is a separate thing.
Section V
Does the sankalp change between tarpan and pind daan?
No. The same sankalp opens whichever offering follows it. तर्पण tarpan, the offering of water, can follow it on its own. पिण्डदान pind daan is the offering of पिण्ड pinda, balls of cooked rice, and it is performed with tarpan. What changes is what is then offered, water or rice. The sankalp itself, and the name and gotra it gives, does not.
Section VI
Explore more guides
What a gotra is
The family line named in the sankalp, why the priest asks for it first, and what happens when a family does not know theirs.
What is shraddh?
The whole rite the sankalp opens, who it is for, when it falls, and its order as the Garuda Purana gives it.
Tarpan for the ancestors
The offering the sankalp can open, where each departed ancestor's own gotra is spoken as the water is poured for them.
Glossary of the ancestral rites
Sankalp, yajaman, gotra and the other words of the declaration, each in Devanagari with a plain meaning.
Section VII