Pitrsपितृ

The pitrs, the Fathers, are the deified ancestors, a class of beings distinct from both gods and humans and dependent on the living for their sustenance. Reverence for them reaches back to the Rigveda, which contains hymns to the Fathers and pictures them feasting with Yama in the highest heaven. From the earliest period, the relationship is reciprocal: the living feed the dead, and the dead bless the living with progeny, prosperity and long life.

The rites

The pitrs are honoured principally through shraddha, in which balls of rice called pindas and libations of water are offered to three ascending generations, father, grandfather and great-grandfather. Because the rites fall to sons, the obligation shaped the traditional insistence on male offspring: every man is born owing three debts, to the sages, the gods and the ancestors, and the debt to the ancestors is discharged by continuing the line and feeding it. The dark fortnight of Pitru Paksha, falling in the month of Bhadrapada, is set apart each year for these offerings, and Gaya in Bihar is the most celebrated of the places where they are performed.

In cosmology

The Upanishads distinguish the path of the gods, leading to liberation, from the path of the Fathers, along which the dead travel to the ancestral world and eventually return to birth. The Puranas elaborate the class further, naming celestial orders of pitrs, such as the Agnishvattas and Barhishads, who preside over the ancestors of gods and men. Through all these refinements the core persists: a vision of the family as a chain of obligation running through death itself.