History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v5.c74.114

v5.c74.114

The preliminaries before starting on a pilgrimage to any tīrtha prescribed by the purānas and digests may be brought together. On a certain day (when a person has decided on tīrtha-yātrā) he should take only one meal, then the next day he should shave himself (according to most digests) and observe a fast; then on the day after the fast he should perform his daily duties, should make a saṅkalpa (declaration of intention) in the form 'I shall perform a pilgrimage to such and such a place and I shall worship Gaṇeśa and my favourite deities for the accomplishment of the pilgrimage without obstacles'; offer worship to Gaṇeśa, to the planets (nine) and his favourite deities with five or sixteen upacāras,¹³²² then perform a pārvaṇa-śrāddha with plenty of ghee according to his own gṛhyasūtra, honour three brāhmaṇas at least and donate some money to them. Then he should put on a pilgrim's dress as described above (p. 573), go round the village in which his house is located (or at least round his own house), reach another village not more distant than one *krośa* (two or two and half miles) and break his fast by eating the remainder of the food cooked and ghee used for the śrāddha (this applies to pilgrimage to Gayā). He may break his fast in his own house (in the case of other tīrthas) and then start. Then the next day he should bathe with pure clothes on and then put on his pilgrim dress and start on his pilgrimage in the forenoon with his face to the east, preferably bare-footed. There are two views here. Some say that on the day on which a man reaches a tīrtha he should observe a fast, while the other view is that the pilgrim should fast on the day previous to his reaching the tīrtha. In the first case he will have to perform a śrāddha on the day of the fast and in that case he cannot actually taste the remnants of śrāddha food but should only smell the cooked food The Kalpataru (on tīrtha p 11) and the Tīrtha-cintāmaṇi (p 14) quote Devala for the proposition that a fast on reaching a tīrtha is not obligatory, but if observed yields special merit.