Hindi pandits in Varanasi (हिन्दी)

Hindi in Varanasi

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.

The ghats serve pilgrims from every Hindi-speaking state, and a Varanasi priest will explain in Hindi and recite in Sanskrit within the same breath. The city's own speech is Bhojpuri; Hindi here is the language of the visitor, and it is used deliberately as such.

It matters most for the rites people come to Kashi specifically to have done — an asthi visarjan, a tarpan on a particular tithi, a rudrabhishek at a named temple. Those are arranged in a day or two by someone who has never met the priest before, and the whole arrangement runs on being understood the first time.