History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v5.c73.t1.301

v5.c73.t1.301

The question when the wives of ancestors became associated with the male ancestors cannot be solved satisfactorily. The *pitāmahī* is not mentioned in the extant Vedic Literature. But it is certain that the wives of male ancestors had come to be associated with their husbands in the sūtra period. For example, the Hir. Gr. II. 10 associates the mother, the paternal grandmother and the paternal great-grandmother with their respective husbands in the monthly śrāddha performed in the dark half. Similarly, the Baud. gr. II. 11.34 not only associates in the Aṣṭakā śrāddha the male maternal ancestors with the male paternal ancestors, but also their respective wives. The Āp. M. P. ¹⁰⁶⁰ has mantras referring to the three male paternal ancestors as well as their wives. The Śāṅ. gr. (IV. 1.11) provides that behind the lumps for the paternal ancestors the performer places the lumps for their wives, putting something between the two sets of piṇḍas and the commentator explains that darbhas are placed between the two sets. The Kauśika sūtra (88 12) also provides for the offering of piṇḍas to the wives of male ancestors to the south of the piṇḍas for male ancestors. The Āśv. gr. (II. 5. 4–5), while speaking of the Anvaṣṭakya rite, refers to piṇḍas to be offered to the wives of ancestors with the addition of rum and the scum of boiled rice. The Vaikhānasa-smārta-sūtra IV. 7 (after describing the Piṇḍapitṛyajña in IV. 5–6) notes that the difference between it and the ordinary monthly śrāddha is that in the latter piṇḍas are offered to the wives of the pitṛs ¹⁰⁶¹. Dr. Caland (in 'Ahnencult' p. 164) thinks that this inclusion of the women ancestors among those to whom piṇḍas were to be offered was made by taking over from Anvaṣṭakya ceremonial described above. This conjecture does not look very probable. The Aṣṭakā rites existed from remote antiquity as shown above. If the offering of piṇḍas to women ancestors were borrowed from the Anvaṣṭakya this item would have figured in all sūtras just as Aṣṭakā śrāddha does. It is rather more probable that the extension to women was a natural growth in course of time. Some of the smṛtis emphasize the participation of the wives of paternal ancestors in the pārvaṇaśrāddha offerings. Śātātapa states¹⁰⁶²: 'In what is offered to the pitṛs after Sapiṇḍīkaraṇa, the mother is a participant everywhere. A śrāddha may be separately offered to the mother in the Anvaṣṭakā rites, in Vṛddhi-śrāddha, at Gayā and on the anniversary of the day of her death; but in other cases it is performed along with the husband'. It is stated by Bṛhaspati that the mother partakes of the śrāddha food along with her husband (i. e. the father of the performer); that the same rule applies to the paternal grandmother and the paternal great-grandmother¹⁰⁶³. The Kalpataru¹⁰⁶⁴ and others held that the wives of the paternal ancestors were not *devatās* in the pārvaṇa-śrāddha, but they only enjoyed the ethereal food which came to the pitṛs, while Hemādri and other southern writers held that the mother and other female ancestors were among the devatās of pārvaṇa-śrāddha, but not the stepmother. There was a divergence of views whether the words 'mother', 'paternal grandmother' and 'paternal great-grandmother' included the co-wives (*sapatnīs*) of these. Hemādri (on śrāddha pp. 97-104) has a long disquisition on this question. According to one view the step-mother, the co-wife of the *pitāmahī* and the co-wife of the *prapitāmahī* would be included in the presentation formula (as quoted below), while according to Hemādri only the real mother, the real paternal grand-mother and the real paternal great-grandmother would ordinarily be included except on rare occasions such as a Mahālayasrāddha or a śrāddha at Gayā.¹⁰⁶⁵