Samānodaka
Samānodaka · samāna-udaka, “sharing the same water”
Grammar: masculine noun, most often in the plural, samānodakāḥ; a compound of samāna (same, shared) and udaka (water): “those who share the water”, the water offering (udaka) given to the departed.
Meaning: the kin of one family beyond the sapiṇḍas, who share the water offering to the departed; the bond reaches to the fourteenth generation.
In the scriptures: in the rules of āśauca (the impurity that falls on a family at a birth or a death), Pushkara, having told the āśauca of the sapiṇḍas, turns to the āśauca of the samānodakas. When a child dies before teething, when a sapiṇḍa living in another country dies, and at the death of an asapiṇḍa, purity comes by sacela-snāna, bathing with one’s clothes on. For asapiṇḍas of one kula (family), purity comes in three nights; for those of the same gotra, by a bath alone (Agni Purāṇa, Chapter 158).
Pushkara then gives the limits of these bonds. The sapiṇḍa relationship ends in the seventh generation, and in the fourteenth generation the samānodaka relationship also ends. By some views, the samānodaka relationship ends when the births and names are no longer remembered; after that only sagotratva, sharing the gotra, remains (Agni Purāṇa, Chapter 158).
Related terms: Sapiṇḍa · Āśauca · Gotra · Udaka-kriyā · Śrāddha
Sources
- Agni Purāṇa, Chapter 158