prayashchitta
प्रायश्चित्त prāyaścittaExpiation. The rites and disciplines prescribed to atone for a transgression, by which the weight of a fault may be reduced or removed. The Dharmashastra sets them out at length for faults from the trivial to the five great sins, and the Shaiva tantric traditions developed their own parallel literature, scaling the penance by the offender's grade of initiation rather than by caste.
Where this term appears
- The Shatkarma: The Six Acts of Tantric Magic Lineages
The shatkarma, the "six acts," are the ritual operations of tantric magic: shanti (pacification and healing), vashya or vashikaran (subjugation), stambhana…
- What is Diksha? Lineages
Diksha is spiritual initiation: the formal rite by which a qualified teacher transmits a mantra, a lineage, and its saving power into a disciple. The tradition…
- The debt to the dead Treatise
The tradition treats the debt to the ancestors, *pitri-rina*, as primary among a person's obligations, discharged through progeny and through *shraddha*, the rite…
- Kubjika and the Paschimamnaya: four origins Lineages
The Paschimamnaya, the Western Transmission, is one of the four streams into which Kaula tantra divided, and its goddess is Kubjika, the bent or hunchbacked one.…
- Samaya: the fetter and who was spared it Lineages
Samaya, in Shaiva tantra, is the set of binding rules an initiate accepts at initiation; a samayin is the initiate who carries them, and prayashchitta is the…
- The Law of Manu Treatise
There is civil and criminal law, vyavahara , with its catalogue of disputes and penalties. There is penance, prayashchitta , the price of expiation.