Who performs a shraddh?
A shraddh belongs to the family whose dead it is for, and the offerings are made in the name of one member of it. This page says whose duty that is by custom, what the tradition provides when he cannot carry it out, and what the priest asks for before he begins.
यजमानyajaman
the person in whose name a rite is made
Table of contents
Practice varies
Families and regions keep the rite in different ways. What a family keeps is what the priest follows. Tell him who is making the offering, and he will say what to do.
Section I
Whose rite is a shraddh?
The family’s own. A श्राद्ध shraddh is the rite performed for a family’s departed, and the offerings in it are made in the name of one member of the family. The word for that person is यजमान yajaman, and it is the word the priest uses for him. The rite 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 yajaman’s name and the family’s गोत्र gotra, the family line passed down from father to son, are spoken in it.
By custom the duty falls first to the son. Where the family is present, the yajaman makes the offerings with his own hands, and the priest directs him.
Section II
What happens when he cannot perform it?
The tradition provides for others in the family. Where the son cannot carry out the duty, it does not lapse. By custom the rite is then made in the name of another member of the family.
Practice differs between families and between regions. Which member of the family it is, and how the offering is arranged, is what that family keeps, and it is not the same everywhere. The priest is told who is making the offering, and he follows what the family keeps.
Section III
What does the priest need to know?
The gotra, the names of the departed the rite is for, how each of them was related to the person making the offering, 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 the priest asks for it before anything else. The tithi fixes the day. It falls on a different day of the ordinary calendar from one year to the next, and the priest opens a पञ्चाङ्ग panchang, the Hindu calendar of tithis, to find it. If the tithi is not known, tell the priest so, and he fixes the day.
Everything else the priest supplies himself: the सामग्री samagri, the materials the rite needs, and the order of the rite as he knows it.
Section IV
Can a priest perform it for a family that cannot be there?
Yes. Tradition provides for the ancestral rites to be performed by a qualified priest for a family that cannot be present. The rite is made in the family’s name, and the sankalp names the yajaman and the family’s gotra either way. How that is done, what the family gives the priest, and what is not performed in absence are on the page on shraddh from abroad.
Section V
Explore more guides
Shraddh from abroad
How the rite is performed by a qualified priest for a family that cannot be present, what the family gives him, and what is not performed in absence.
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 a gotra is
The first thing the priest asks for, why it is spoken in the sankalp, and what happens when a family does not know theirs.
Glossary of the ancestral rites
Yajaman, purohit, sankalp, tithi and the other words on this page, each in Devanagari with a plain meaning.
Section VI