History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v3.c40.128

v3.c40.128

It is somewhat strange that in some of the gṛhya sūtras it is stated that in the rites on Anvaṣṭakā day when *piṇḍas* are offered to the male ancestors, piṇḍas are offered to the mother, paternal grandmother and paternal great-grandmother and also liquor is offered. For example, the Āśv. gṛ. II. 5. 5 says that 'to the wives (of the ancestors) are offered surā and the scum of boiled rice in addition' (to the piṇḍas).¹⁸⁹⁶ The Pār. gṛ. (III. 3) states 'also to the female ancestors he makes piṇḍa offerings and pours for them liquor and water oblations into pits.' The Kāṭhaka gṛ. (65. 7–8) also prescribes that in the Anvaṣṭakā surā was to be sprinkled with a spoon about the piṇḍas for women ancestors and the piṇḍas were to be eaten by servants or by niṣādas or may be thrown in fire or water or brāhmaṇas may eat them. It is difficult to account for this. If a conjecture may be hazarded, it is possible that women drank (perhaps secretly) liquor even when their husbands had given up the practice owing to the force of public opinion or that in those days (before the gṛhya sūtras) intercaste marriages being allowed, the women ancestors might have been kṣatriya or vaiśya women and so were not unfamiliar with drinking. Manu XI. 95 forbids drinking to brāhmaṇas and Kullūka notes that there were commentators who held that the prohibition did not apply to brāhmaṇa women. Whatever the reasons for the above directions in the gṛhya sūtras may be, they run counter to the prevailing sentiments, not only of the Kāṭhaka Saṁ. and the Brāhmaṇa texts, but also to the unanimous prescriptions of the dharmasūtras and smṛtis.