Can a shraddh be performed for a family living abroad?
Yes. Tradition provides for a shraddh to be performed by a qualified priest for a family that cannot be present, and the sankalp names the yajaman and the family's gotra either way. This page says what makes the rite the family's own, what the family gives the priest, and where it is performed.
Table of contents
What is not performed in absence
A bath is something a person does himself. The ancestral rites have standing in the tradition when a qualified priest performs them for a family that cannot be present. Ritual bathing does not. Nobody bathes for anyone else, and nobody's bath at the river is anyone else's. Tradition holds that being there in person is better.
Section I
Can the rite be performed if the family cannot be there?
Yes. Tradition provides for a श्राद्ध shraddh, the rite for a family’s departed, to be performed by a qualified priest for a family that is not present. In the family’s name the priest says the सङ्कल्प sankalp and makes the offerings. The sankalp is the declaration in which the priest states out loud who is making the offering, for whom, where, and on what day.
Section II
What makes the rite the family’s own?
The sankalp. Every ancestral rite opens with it. 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 the sankalp, and so are the names of the departed the rite is for. Without the sankalp the offering has no named recipient.
The naming is done by the priest, out loud, and it is the naming that makes the offering this family’s and no other’s. The family’s distance from the river does not change what is spoken.
Section III
What does the family give the priest?
The gotra, the names of the departed, how each of them was related to the person in whose name the offering is made, and the तिथि tithi of the death, the day of the lunar calendar it fell on, if it is known.
The gotra comes first. It is spoken in the sankalp with the yajaman’s name, and a family that does not know its gotra should ask an older relative or a family priest before the rite. The tithi fixes the day. The priest opens a पञ्चाङ्ग panchang, the Hindu calendar of tithis, to find which day of the ordinary calendar it falls on. Everything else he supplies himself.
Section IV
Where is it performed?
At a तीर्थ tirtha, a place of pilgrimage, and in the oldest sense a crossing place on a river. A rite performed at a tirtha is held to carry more weight than the same rite at home, which is why families travel for it.
Ramkund at Nashik is a tirtha for the ancestral rites. It is a कुण्ड kund, a pool with stone sides and steps, and it sits on the घाट ghat, the steps down to the Godavari. पितृ पक्ष pitru paksha is the fortnight of the year kept for the ancestors, but the rites at Ramkund are performed through the year, not only then.
Section V
Explore more guides
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 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.
Aparahna kaal
The part of the day the rite is kept for, how the priest finds it from the panchang, and why it is Ramkund's own window that governs when the family is elsewhere.
What a gotra is
The family line spoken in the sankalp, why it is the one thing to find out before the rite, and what happens when it is not known.
Section VI