Badarī (Tree)

Badarī · badarī, “the jujube tree”

Badarī has other meanings too: see all meanings of Badarī.

Grammar: feminine noun badarī, the jujube tree; its fruit is badara (neuter). The Telugu of the Brahma Purāṇa gives rēgu.

Meaning: the jujube tree, whose fruit is the food of the pitṛs and is offered at śrāddha.

In the scriptures: Vyāsa tells the munis how the first śrāddha came to be. At the junction of the Tretā and Dvāpara yugas the pitṛs lived on Mount Meru with the Viśvedevas, until Ūrjā, the daughter of Candra, came to them and they took her without her father’s giving. By Candra’s śāpa the pitṛs fell, fallen from yoga, at the foot of the Himālaya, and Ūrjā became the river Kokā there. Seeing the pitṛs suffering from hunger, they were given a badarī tree and a cow that gave honey-milk. The divine milk, the water of the Kokā river and the badarī fruit are set down as the food of the pitṛ-devatās, and living on that food, ten thousand years passed for the pitṛs like a single day, until Bhagavān Vishṇu as Varāha lifted them from the waters of the Kokā (Brahma Purāṇa, Chapter 219).

In his teaching on the rules of śrāddha, Vyāsa names badara, the jujube, among the fruits to be offered to the pitṛs, with the mango, the bilva, the pomegranate, the date and the grape, and also vitaṅkata, the wild jujube (Brahma Purāṇa, Chapter 220).

Related terms: Badara · Śrāddha · Pitṛ · Kokā · Bilva

Sources

• Brahma Purāṇa, Chapters 219–220