The offering of pinda, balls of cooked rice and barley, to the dead; in the days after a death the daily pinda is held to build a new subtle body for the departed, carrying it from a restless preta to a settled ancestor.

Where this term appears

• The debt to the dead Treatise →

  Hindu tradition holds that a person is born owing three debts, one of them to the ancestors, and the rites for the dead are how it is paid. In the shraddha and…

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