Garudapurana 2.25

Glorious Garuḍa Mahāpurāṇa — 25 / The blessed Viṣṇu said: / Hereafter I shall explain the decision regarding males and females, / whether alive or dead, or whether older than five years.

When the fifth year is completed, a male child is indeed established: / he understands all the senses, and the difference between forms and formlessness.

Due to the maturation of past deeds, living beings suffer slaughter and imprisonment. / Sin certainly causes the death of all, from brāhmaṇas down to the lowest castes.

When a fetus is destroyed, there is no rite; when a child dies, milk should be given. / Furthermore, according to one's capacity, one should offer rice cooked in milk and pure milk upon death.

On the eleventh day and twelfth day, one should prescribe the rites for a boy / without the bull-release ceremony and without the great gifts.

Feeding boys and children and wrapping in cloth [should be done]. / Whether the deceased is a child, a youth, or an elder, the water-jar is indeed required.

One should bury in the earth a child who is two months short of two years old. / Beyond that, O best of birds, cremation of the body is prescribed.

He is called a babe until the emergence of teeth, and a child until the crest-tuft [ceremony]; / he is declared in all the scriptures to be a boy until the investiture with the sacred cord.

How should one proceed for Śūdras and others, since doubt arises from the absence of the sacred cord? / Omitting the nine months from the womb, he is a babe up to sixteen months;

thereafter he should be known as a child up to twenty-seven months; / up to five years he is in boyhood; at nine years he is an older boy;

at sixteen years he is an adolescent; after that, one should declare youth. / Even if one dies in the fifth year, whether invested [with the cord] or not,

only that which was previously stated should be done; one seeks the offering of ten rice balls. / Because of the small scope of his actions and his slight bondage to sensory objects,

and because of the small size of his body and clothing, he desires only a slight rite. / To whatever degree the creature has developed and is wrapped in sensory objects,

whatever was his means of sustenance in this world, that is desired to be given to him. / Even sons born from the seed of Brahmā and beloved of the divine sages

are definitely judged by Yama and Yama's messengers, O bird. / Whether a child, an elder, or a youth, embodied souls desire the water-jar.

The embodied soul, going everywhere here, always experiences pleasure and pain. / Leaving behind that self [the physical frame], as a serpent leaves its sloughed skin,

the person, the size of a thumb, supported by air and afflicted with hunger [departs]. / Therefore, gifts must certainly be given when a child dies.

For five years from birth, he consumes what is given without ritual consecration. / If death occurs when a child is older than five years,

[one should perform] the rites such as the release of a bull, but without the rite of sapinda-union. / When the twelfth day arrives, one should perform the sixteen śrāddhas.

One should offer rice balls with milk-rice or raw sugar in due order, / along with the gift of a water-jar and whatever incidental gifts [are customary].

One should give meals to brāhmaṇas and great gifts according to one's capacity, / as well as the gift of lamps and whatever else, always for one older than five years,

and it should be performed, O best of birds, before the rite [of sacred vows], for the satisfaction of the deceased. / When all this is not performed, he attains the state of a ghost.

It should be given even before the vow, and thereafter for the host of ancestors; / with the exclamation svāhā, one should perform the sixteen single-purpose offerings.

With straight darbha grass, white sesame seeds, the sacred thread worn over the right shoulder, / and made towards the south—when this is performed, they attain the supreme state.

Becoming long-lived once more, they are certainly born in their own lineage: / a son who grants all happiness and increases the joy of his parents.

For just as space is single, and just as the sun and moon are single, / yet you see their form separate and identical in jars and the like, so it is with this.

Even so the self moves ever in all sons: / whatever disposition a person had originally at the union of semen and blood,

through that connection of feeling, the sons become performers of those very deeds. / Taking on the likeness of the father, the son is born to someone.

Some [son] is endowed with more beauty than his father, discerning in virtues, devoted to generosity; / someone like him in this world has neither been nor shall be.

A blind man is not born from a blind man; a mute is not born from a mute; / a deaf man is not born from a deaf man; and indeed a learned man is not [necessarily] born from a scholar. / They are not seen to be exact counterparts; listen to my word:

Garuḍa said: / Ten kinds of sons are remembered, beginning with the legitimate son and the son born of the wife; / but what of him who is an adopted son, and the son of a maidservant?

What destination does the person attain who has fallen into the power of death, / who has no daughter, no daughter's son, and no son?

How should his śrāddha be performed, and by what rule should it take place? / The Blessed Lord said: / Indeed, having seen the face of a son, one is freed from debt to the ancestors.

From the sight of a grandson, a creature is freed even from the three debts; / endlessness of worlds and attainment of heaven [come] through sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons.

Sons born of another's field and the rest, grant only worldly enjoyment; / the legitimate son should perform the pārvaṇa śrāddha according to the prescribed rule.

Other sons perform an ekoddiṣṭa śrāddha, not a pārvaṇa. / A son born of a woman married by the Brāhma rite elevates [the ancestors], but an adopted one leads them down; / performing the annual śrāddha, he surely turns toward hell.

All gifts are to be given, O bird, except the gift of food; / an adopted son should perform the ekoddiṣṭa, not the pārvaṇa.

By offering śrāddha every year to father and mother he does not incur sin; / if, abandoning the ekoddiṣṭa, he performs the pārvaṇa,

he would lead both himself and the ancestors to the abode of Yama. / But those who are adopted, and those who are sons of maidservants and the like,

should perform the ancestral śrāddha at a sacred ford and give gifts to a twice-born. / If an adopted son gives cooked food [in śrāddha],

one should know that śrāddha to be in vain, like a twice-born [eating] food of a Śūdra; / that śrāddha does not gratify the ancestors headed by the grandfather. / Knowing this, O best of birds, one should abandon sons of low caste.

One born of an ascetic, and one born from a Śūdra on a Brāhmaṇa woman, / are remembered as lower than a Cāṇḍāla;

know both of these, and one born of a woman of the same gotra, to be Cāṇḍālas. / Having begotten sons destined to ascend to heaven, O King of Birds,

through those of good conduct happiness is to be attained; through those of bad conduct one goes to hell. / Even through those born of low caste who are of good conduct, happiness increases.

Freed from the impurity of the Kali age, worshipped by hosts of Siddhas, fanned with garlands of divine chowries by Apsarases, / he alone can deliver even a hundred ancestors, relatives, and sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons sunk in hell.

Thus, in the holy Garuḍa Purāṇa, in the latter section, in the second part, in the section on dharma, in the Pretakalpa, in the dialogue between Śrī Kṛṣṇa and Garuḍa, the twenty-fifth chapter, entitled ‘The Description of the Funeral Rites for a Deceased Child and of the Rites Performed by Different Kinds of Sons.’