Sapiṇḍa
Sapiṇḍa · sa-piṇḍa, “sharing the piṇḍa”
Grammar: masculine noun, most often in the plural, sapiṇḍāḥ; sa (with, the same) and piṇḍa (the ball of rice offered to the departed): “one who shares the piṇḍa”. Its opposite is asapiṇḍa, one outside the piṇḍa relation. The kośa of the Agni Purāṇa gives sapiṇḍa and sanābhi as words for the kin who share the piṇḍa (Agni Purāṇa, Chapter 364).
Meaning: the kin of one family who share the piṇḍa, from the root ancestor down to the seventh generation; the circle of kin on whom āśauca (the impurity of a birth or a death) falls.
In the scriptures: the Agni Purāṇa speaks of the sapiṇḍas in its rules of āśauca and of prāyaścitta.
Who the sapiṇḍas are. Pushkara tells Paraśurāma that among sapiṇḍas, those from the mūla-purusha (the root ancestor) down to the seventh generation, the āśauca of death is ten days for brāhmaṇas, and the āśauca of birth is the same; the death āśauca is eleven days for kshatriyas, fifteen for vaiśyas and one month for śūdras. When death āśauca arises in a sapiṇḍa brāhmaṇa family, all become pure in ten days, kshatriyas in eleven, a vaiśya in fifteen and a śūdra in one month (Agni Purāṇa, Chapter 157).
The āśauca of the sapiṇḍas. For a miscarriage there is no āśauca for the sapiṇḍas up to the sixth month; in the seventh and eighth months, three nights. If a child dies before teething, the sapiṇḍas are pure at once. If a brāhmaṇa boy under three years dies, the sapiṇḍas keep one night; for a kshatriya boy, two days; for vaiśyas three days; for śūdras five days. For one who does not keep the agnihotra, āśauca begins at once when a sapiṇḍa dies; for one who keeps it, only after the cremation. After the betrothal of a kanyā and before her marriage, other sapiṇḍas are pure at once. All these āśaucas are for the sapiṇḍas only (Agni Purāṇa, Chapter 158).
When a sapiṇḍa living in another country dies, purity comes by sacela-snāna, bathing with one’s clothes on. For those killed by lightning, the sapiṇḍas keep three days. As death āśauca comes to the sapiṇḍas, so birth āśauca too comes to them: death āśauca comes to all sapiṇḍas, but the untouchability of birth falls especially on the mother and father, and above all on the mother. When a second āśauca comes within the last night of an āśauca, it ends with the first and all sapiṇḍas become pure; if it comes in the morning of the last day after the last night has passed, the sapiṇḍas are pure after three more days (Agni Purāṇa, Chapter 158).
The asapiṇḍas. At the death of an asapiṇḍa, purity comes by sacela-snāna. Asapiṇḍas of one kula are pure in three nights, and those of the same gotra by a bath alone. One who carries the body of an asapiṇḍa becomes pure after sacela-snāna, touching fire and eating ghee; if he ate the food of that family, after ten days; if he neither ate their food nor lived in that house, in one day (Agni Purāṇa, Chapter 158).
Where the bond ends. The sapiṇḍa relationship ends in the seventh generation, and the samānodaka relationship in the fourteenth, or, by some views, when the births and names are no longer remembered; after that only sagotratva, sharing the gotra, remains (Agni Purāṇa, Chapter 158).
The casting out of a patita. In the rite of casting out a patita, one fallen through a mahāpāpa (great pāpa), his sapiṇḍas, with his relatives, on a censured day at the time of the evening sandhyā, before the family, the ṛtvijas and the gurus, perform the udaka-kriyā (the water offering made for the dead) for him while he is still alive, and have a dāsī (a woman servant) kick over a pot filled with water, as is done for the departed. The sapiṇḍas and relatives keep one day of āśauca and do not speak with him (Agni Purāṇa, Chapter 170).
In prāyaścitta. For union with young girls, caṇḍāla women, daughters, the daughters of sapiṇḍas, and their wives, death alone is the prāyaścitta (Agni Purāṇa, Chapter 173).
Related terms: Piṇḍa · Samānodaka · Āśauca · Gotra · Sapiṇḍīkaraṇa · Śrāddha · Patita
Sources
- Agni Purāṇa, Chapters 157–158, 170, 173, 364