Before you start
The remedies for Pitra Dosh are acts of remembrance, not transactions. Tradition values doing a simple thing regularly over doing an elaborate thing once, so choose what you can actually keep up. None of these needs a pandit, and none should be done in fear: the idea behind Pitra Dosh is an unpaid debt of gratitude, and gratitude is repaid calmly. If you are not sure you have the dosh at all, how it is read in a kundli is worth reading first.
Every day
- Water to the Sun at sunrise. Offer water from a copper vessel towards the rising Sun — the Sun being the significator of the father and the lineage. A few moments, facing east.
- Remember the ancestors by name. Many families keep a photograph of the grandparents in the puja space and name them at the daily prayer.
- Serve the living elders. The tradition is consistent that care for parents and elders while they are alive is the first form of respect to the lineage.
Tarpan on every Amavasya
Amavasya, the new moon, is the day of the ancestors each month. A simple tarpan at home:
- Bathe, and sit facing south, the direction associated with the pitrs.
- Take water in a vessel with a little black sesame (til) and, if you have it, a blade of kusha grass.
- Name each ancestor you remember — father’s side, then mother’s — and pour a little water with sesame for each, from the palm over the base of the thumb.
- Close with a prayer that they are at peace, and a request for their blessings on the family.
Food in the ancestors’ name
Feeding in the ancestors’ name is part of every shradh and can be done on its own. The traditional recipients are a cow, a dog, crows and ants — the panchbali of the shradh — and a person in need. On Amavasya, set aside a portion of the day’s simple vegetarian food for them before the family eats. Giving food, clothes or essentials to someone in need in an ancestor’s name is also traditional, and needs no special day.
Customs many families follow
Some practices are widespread custom rather than scriptural rule, and it is fair to say so: offering water to a peepal tree on Saturdays or Amavasya; lighting a lamp facing south on the evening of Amavasya; and feeding crows during Pitru Paksha specifically. None does harm, and many families find them meaningful. Keep the ones your family already practises.
In Pitru Paksha
The fortnight of Pitru Paksha each autumn is the principal time for the ancestors. Tarpan is offered each day, and shradh is performed on the tithi on which each ancestor died — or on Sarva Pitru Amavasya, its last day, for anyone whose tithi is not known. The dates for the year are on our Pitru Paksha calendar.
What these can and cannot do
Done sincerely, these observances are exactly what the tradition asks of descendants. They are not a guarantee of any particular result — a marriage, a child, a job or a recovery — and they are no substitute for medical, legal or financial help where that is what a problem needs. What they do is keep the lineage remembered, which is the whole of what Pitra Dosh is about.
When a puja is the next step
Where shradh has lapsed for years, where a kundli reading points clearly to Pitra Dosh, or where the family simply wants the obligation completed properly at a tirtha, the next step is to have tarpan and pind daan performed in your name by pandits on the Shipra in Ujjain. If a death in the family was untimely, a different rite applies — which rite fits which situation sets it out.