tHARPANAM

Amavasya tarpanam is the offering of water mixed with gingelly to the dead ancestors and it means “That offering which satisfies (our pitrus)”. The offering is addressed to three generations of father, grand father and great grand father along with their wives in one’s family and maternal grand father, his father and grand father along with their wives in our mother's birth family. Only those whose father is dead are eligible to do tarpanam. If maternal grand father is alive tarpanam is not done for his family but restricted to one’s family.

Dead ancestors are supposed to live in Pithru loka for some time and either reborn as any being or are in lokas like deva loka, Vaikunta etc or even attained salvation by merging with god. The pithru loka is populated by three group of pithru devas viz, Vasu, Rudra and Adhithya. These devas receive our oblations and make it reach to our ancestors wherever they are and in whichever form they are. The pithru loka is supposed to be on the unseen side of the moon. This portion gets exposed to sun on the new moon days. It is lunch time for the people populating the pithru loka. These pithrus — since they have left the world and are solely dependent on only their progenies to feed them — feeding them through tarpanams assumes importance and therefore it is assumed anyone not doing it will be cursed by Pithru devas leading to absence of male descendents to offer tarpanam to us when we are dead and gone.  

Nobody knows for sure what happens to the soul once it leaves the body. Suppose the soul has been reborn as per the karma theory? If our pitrus are reborn than whom are we feeding? Chances are that dead man would have been born sooner than later rather than he being irretrievably merging with God. Probably for saints like Tyagaraja this could hold true. But for millions of us we can sense the truth of being trapped in cycle of births and deaths owing to our sins that brought us to this earth in the first place. However we are ready to argue and fight till eternity that pitrus are waiting to be fed by us on the premise that our sastras can “never be wrong” and if someone refuses to agree to our views we can straightaway abuse him calling him names to show that how wiser we are indeed in our commitment to sastras.

The point is we have wilfully shaped our belief as definitive and refuse to except a differing viewpoint especially if someone with a different religious denomination disagrees with us. Once a close Muslim friend of mine told me, “why bother and waste money on a dead man once he is laid to rest? Forget him.” Should we take it as hurting our sentiments by an Islamist who cannot but be “anti-Hindu” or should we ponder if there is some truth in what he said? Nobody can say or dare say he holds the patent for the esoteric truth when no saint has even dared to do it. {For those who are waiting to pounce on me that I am questioning the very core of sastras and not intent on preserving Brahminism I wish to say that I am a believer in tarpanams and sradhams}

True, for many of us when we practice age old rituals we feel satisfied and feel there is less tension after we dutifully do the act and see our vadiyar go home satisfied. We feel God will reward us many times more than we paid the vadiyar. It acts as a soothing balm to our troubled mind. The real problem is when we consider rituals as en end in itself it becomes dangerous as we go overboard tending to undervalue the living. Many of us would happily neglect our parents, especially in their old age, than miss performing elaborate sradhams after they are gone. This is a tragedy as the honour for the living comes too late.