Chapter LXXXV - Merit of offering funeral cakes at Pretasila in Gaya

Brahma said:—Then having performed a ceremonial ablution with the Varunastra Mantra, the pilgrim should offer obsequious cakes to his departed manes at the sanctuary of the hill of spirits (Pretashila) and invoke them as follows:—

“On the blades of Kusha grass extended in my front, and with this libation of water containing sesamum, I invoke the presence of the souls of those who had been born in my family and subsequently died without any means of succour from the shades of the infernal region.

I offer these obsequious cakes for the liberation of those spirits who had once born in flesh in the family of my father or mother.

I offer this obsequious cake to those spirits, who had once taken their birth in the family of my maternal grandfather and who are divested of all means of liberation from their infernal confines.

I offer this obsequious cakes for the release of those of my relations who had died in their mother’s womb, or had found an untimely grave even without cutting a single tooth.

I have offered this obsequious cake for the succour of those of my friends, whether born in my family or otherwise, and even whose names and spiritual clanship have escaped from my memory.

I offer this cake to the souls of those who have committed suicide or met a violent death either by water, poison, blow, or strangulation.

I offer this obsequious cake to the spirits of those who had been burnt to death, or devoured by lions and tigers, or killed by horned cattle, or expired under the bites of fanged or sharp-toothed beasts.

I offer this obsequious cake to the spirits of those whose earthly remains had been cremated in unconsecrated fire, or had not been consigned to the flames of any fire at all, as well as to the souls of those who had been killed by thieves or lightning.

I offer this obsequious cake for the liberation of those spirits who had been kept confined within the dark walls of the hells known as the Raurava and the Kalasutra.

I offer this obsequious cake for the liberation of those spirits who are at present doomed to the tortures of those divisions of hell, which are known as the Kumbhipaka (hell of whirling eddies) or Asipatra Vanam (Forest of sword blades).

I offer this obsequious cake for the liberation of spirits who are tortured in other quarters of hell.

I offer this obsequious cake for the emancipation of those spirits who had re-incarnated as serpents, birds, or other lower animals, or had been consigned to the voiceless agonies of vegetable life.

I offer this obsequious cake for the liberation of those spirits who under the ordination of the god of death, had been consigned to suffer eternal tortures in hell.

I offer this obsequious cake for the elevation of those spirits in the astral plane who, for their countless misdeeds in successive re-births, and through the workings of the propulsions of ignoble passions turned into dynamics of fate, are perpetually getting down in the graduated scale of life, and to whom a Working upward to to the plane of human existence has become a thing of rarest impossibility, May the souls of those who were friends to me in this life, of had been my friends in any other existence, of of those who are not related to me in that Capacity and are utterly friendless for the present, be propitiated and liberated by this obsequious cake Which I have offered at the present sanctuary in Gaya.

May the Souls of any of my forefathers, who might be staying at present in the shape of astral beings, derive perpetual satisfaction from the obsequious cake which

I have offered. I have offered obsequious cakes for the satisfaction of all those spirits who had once taken their birth in the family of my father or mother, or who were related to my preceptors, or father-in-law or any Other relations in life, or who had died without having any issue of their own, and accordingly stand, at present, divested of their specific shares of funeral cakes and libations of water, or who had been born deaf, dumb, blind, cripple or idiotic in life, Whether they are any Way related-to me or not, or who had died in the Womb without ever seeing the light of god, (whether do I know them or not), and may they derive eternal felicity from this cake which I have offered to them.

May the gods and Brahma and Ishana, etc., in particular, bear testimony to the fact that I have come to Gaya, and effected the liberation of my fathers from the confines of the nether world.

Witness, O thou mace-bearing god, that I have arrived at Gaya, done all the needful rites for the emancipation of my departed manes, and stand fully absolved from the three-fold debt of human existence.”

The sanctity of the sacred field of Kumkshetra appertains to the Mahanadi, to the Brahmasada, to the Prabhasa, to the Gayashira, to the Sarasvati, to the Akshayavata, to the Dharmaranyam and to the Dhenukapristha at Gaya and these places should be deemed as equally sanctified as the memorable battle-field of the Kauravas.