Shraddh and Tarpan, Pitr-Paksha, obsequies
Funeral rites and Shraddh must be distinguished from each other. Funeral
rites (antyeshthi) are amangal (inauspicious) while Shraddh are mangal
(auspicious).
To understand this it should be borne in mind that when a person dies,
his or her gross body (sthula sharira) is burnt. This being in fact the ‘Antya
ishthi’ (antyeshthi) the last sacrifice offered in fire, but the soul cannot
quit the gross body without a vehicle of some kind. This vehicle is the
Linga-sharira or subtle body, sometimes described as angushtha-matra (of the
size of a thumb), invested in which the deceased person remains hovering near
the burning ground or crematorium.
He or she is then in the condition of a simple individual soul invested
with a subtle body, and is called a PRETA, i.e. a departed spirit or ghost. Thus
an embodied soul (jiva) who has departed from the physical body at death is
called a Preta. He or she has no real body capable of enjoying or suffering
anything, and is consequently in a restless, uncomfortable plight.
Moreover, while in this condition he or she is held to be an impure
being, and all the relations who participate in his or her funeral rites are
held to be impure until the first Shraddh is performed. Furthermore, if a person
dies away from kindred (relations), who alone can perform the funeral
ceremonies, and who are perhaps unaware of his or her death, and unable
therefore to perform them, he or she becomes a ‘pishach’, a foul wandering
ghost, disposed to take revenge for its misery upon all living creatures by a
variety of malignant acts.
The object then, of the antyeshthi or funeral rites, which are carried
out for twelve days after death, is not only to soothe or give shanti (peace) by
libations of consecrated water to the troubled spirit, but to furnish the preta
with an intermediate body, between the ‘linga’ or subtle and the ‘sthula’ or
gross body- with a body, that is to say, which is capable of enjoying or
suffering, and which is composed of gross particles, though not of the same kind
as the earthly gross body. In this manner only can the preta obtain gati or
progress onwards.
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