Shraddha
श्रद्धा śraddhāFaith, in the sense of earnest trust and seriousness rather than mere belief; the settled confidence that lets a person commit wholly to a guru's teaching, and the ground on which bhakti rests. (Distinct from the rite for the departed.)
Where this term appears
- What happens after death in Hinduism? Essentials
This is the purpose of the shraddha rites, the ceremonies performed for the dead, especially in the days and year after a death and during the annual period devoted to the ancestors.
- Why do Hindus cremate their dead? Essentials
Then, over the following days and up to a year, come the shraddha rites and the offerings of pinda , balls of rice, which, in the classical account of the Garuda Purana, literally build a new subtle body for th…
- The Four Ashramas: the stages of life Essentials
…ich the man about to renounce performs his own funeral rites, his own shraddha , the offerings normally made for the dead.
- The Navagraha: The Nine Planetary Powers Deities
…stors, the pitris , repaid by raising a child and by the offerings of shraddha that sustain the departed.
- The debt to the dead Treatise
And the ongoing discharge is through shraddha , the rite of offering made to the ancestors, by which the living sustain the dead in their after-death state and keep faith with the bond.
- Nachiketas and the god of death Journal
…se a gift that costs the giver nothing is not a gift, and the boy has shraddha , a word that means faith but also a kind of earnest seriousness, the quality of a person who cannot let a thing be hollow.
- The Beings of the Dark Treatise
The bhutas, pretas, pisachas, rakshasas and vetalas are the feared 'shadow classes' of the Hindu cosmos — ghosts, hungry dead, flesh-eaters, demons and…
- The debt to the dead Treatise
Shraddha is the whole rite, the entire ceremony of devotion to the departed, and it takes its name from shraddha , faith, because it is the act performed faithfully for those who can no longer see it done.