Hindi pandits in Gaya (हिन्दी)

Hindi in Gaya

Hindi is the language a north Indian ritual is explained in rather than performed in. The sankalp names the family, the gotra, the place and the day, and it is said in Sanskrit; what the pandit tells you about it — why this step comes before that one, what the offering stands for, when to fold your hands — is Hindi.

It is also the language families fall back on when a household holds more than one mother tongue, which in a city is most households. A Maithili-speaking grandmother and a Bhojpuri-speaking son-in-law will both follow a katha read in Hindi.

Gaya's pind daan brings mourners from Maharashtra, Gujarat, Bengal and the south, and no local language reaches them. Hindi is what the tirtha-purohits use with visitors, and at a rite performed once in a lifetime for a parent it is the difference between following the steps and watching them.

The sequence itself is long — the Falgu, the Vishnupad, the Akshayavat, each with its own sankalp — and it is walked rather than sat through. Instructions are given on the move, in a crowd, and a family that cannot follow them ends up being led through their own rite. That is the thing asking for Hindi prevents.