INSIDE THE GURU'S GATE - Anpere

On the thirteenth day or the seventeenth day after death, as well on the anniversary
day, the mourning family invites five people from the gurdwara to offer them food at
the house. The Sikhs in Varanasi say they are “feeding the panj pyare”, or the five
beloved of Khalsa. During this ceremony the five people representing the panj pyare
will perform an Ardas in the name of the departed soul and partake in a meal with the
family. The feeding of five people is at the request of the individual family and it is
normally the responsibility of the gurdwara manager to put together a group of male
Sikhs for the visit. The granthi, sevadar, ragi or any of the employees who are free at
hand may be selected for the undertaking, as long as they are Amritdhari Sikhs. In
most cases the granthi will accompany the visits as he considers it his duty to perform
the Ardas for the family and collect donations for the gurdwara.
When the group of the “five beloved” reaches the house they may recite either
the mulmantra in unison or take turns to recite the lines of a single hymn from the
Guru Granth Sahib appropriate to the occasion. As a granthi informed, the hymn sung
at the feeding occasion should concern the theme of death and create an atmosphere
of thoughtfulness. Before the “five beloved” accept the food, the granthi performs
Ardas. At the events I participated in, the five people would simply take a seat at the
dining table and be served a vegetarian meal by the mother of the house, sometimes
the favorite food of the deceased, followed by tea and sweets. Once they had eaten
they washed their hands and the granthi performed yet another Ardas in which he
mentioned the name of the mourning family, pleaded their welfare and success, and
asked God to give them strength to continue with seva. During the prayer the mother
of the house would offer a monetary donation to the gurdwara by putting money
bills in between the closed palms of the granthi.
The “feeding the five beloved” can be conducted in connection with any major
life event, including birth and marriage, but the ceremony has become intimately
associated with death observances and ancestor worship. 636 As the granthis themselves
observed, the contemporary practice bears strong resemblance to brahman
bhojan ‒ the concluding part of the Hindu shraddh ceremony on the thirteenth day
after a death when the mourning family is feeding honorable guests or Brahmins. 637
The Hindu informants Parry interviewed in Varanasi conceived the feeding of Brahmins
as a symbolic act of digesting the temporary body of a dead person’s preta
(which is created by the preceding ceremony of offering rice balls or pind dan) when it
has reached the abode of the ancestors. The Hindu feeding custom marks the restoration
of social order, which has been suspended during the period of mourning and
636
The custom of feeding five Sikhs can be traced back to the time after Khalsa. In Nand Lal Rahitnama,
a Sikh code of conduct of the early eighteenth century, Sikhs are encouraged to summon
and feed five people in times of need and perform an Ardas in order to fulfil the wishes of the
suppliant (McLeod 1987: 44). In this historical text the feeding of five people is not exclusively
associated with funeral rites or death, but stands as a more general advice whenever the need
arises.
637
For the Hindu custom of Brahman bhojan, see Parry 1983: 206 ‒ 7, Gold 1988: 97 ‒ 99. The
textual references to the Hindu ceremony are given by Shastri 1963: 185ff.
389
Published on www.anpere.net in May 2008