The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c31.s3.18

v2.c31.s3.18

The ceremony of the tonsure² is usually performed in the third year, or the fifth and seventh for a Kṣatriya and a Vaiçya respectively: the essence of the ceremony is the formal wetting of the child’s hair, the putting of bunches of Darbha on it, the cutting of the right and then the back and then the left side with a razor, which is not to injure the child, and which is addressed as an axe. The hair with the Darbha is thrown away in the cow-stall, near water, or in a pool of water or elsewhere. For three days after, the barber, it seems, must not use the razor: as often, in the case of girls the formulae used for boys are omitted. The hair is then arranged in the peculiar mode of the family, or in a number of tufts according to the number of seers hailed as belonging to the family tree in the Pravara ceremony. The barber receives as his fee rice and butter, or another gift: the family teacher a cow. In the sixteenth year, or the 22nd and 24th for the Kṣatriya and Vaiçya, follows the shaving of the beard based on the same model, but the cutting is extended to hair, beard, hair of the body, and nails. The fee to the priest is a pair of cattle, to the barber a goat. The shorn youth should for a year, or at least three days, observe chastity, and not cut his hair again.³ The piercing of the ears in the third or fourth year is a rite which is only recorded in one late text.⁴