Avīrā

Avīrā · a-vīrā, “one without a vīra”

Grammar: feminine noun, a-vīrā, “one without a vīra“.

Meaning: a widow without children. The Brahma Vaivarta Purāṇa glosses the word so.

In the scriptures: In the Prakṛti Khaṇḍa, Yama tells Sāvitrī the narakas that those who do pāpa reach. The Lohakuṇḍa, “the pit of iron”, is boiling. Its deed is eating food from the hand of a woman who is an avīrā, a widow without children, or of a woman in her menstrual period. The time there is one hundred years. After that the one who ate is born seven times as a washerman and seven times as a blacksmith, and in those births he suffers many wounds and is poor.

Yama also names the deeds that count as atideśika gohatyā: eating the food of a childless widow, living by prostituting one’s wife, omitting the three sandhyās, omitting the pitṛ- and deva-pūjā at the right times, and not honouring a guest.

Sources

• Brahma Vaivarta Purāṇa, Prakṛti Khaṇḍa, Chapter 30