The sacred grass of Hindu ritual, also called kusha, strewn on the ground to mark and purify a rite's space and used to make ritual implements. In the Shaiva death rites a small figure of darbha grass can stand in for a body that cannot be recovered, receiving the dead man's name at its heart and then his initiation.

Where this term appears

• Shaiva death rites: burning a man who is already free Lineages →

  A small figure of darbha grass, or of cow dung, bathed in Shiva water, with the whole apparatus of principles and deities installed on it.

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