Daily Duties

This chapter shows that, just as initiation and training in Veda were being promoted as prerequisites for a life of Ārya piety according to varṇāśrama-dharma, some of the student’s or snātaka’s elaborate standards of bodily purification were made to apply to the ordinary householder as well, constituting that status as an āśrama, that is, as a formal “religious profession.” Those purity norms, together with the basic duties to recite and make offerings (even notional, semi-interiorized offerings), come to be taught as the “minimum daily requirements” of any Ārya householder. This trend crystalizes as a distinct rubric only in post-fifth-century CE Dharmaśāstra works. Included in the list are śauca (ablutions after defecation and urination), ācamana (sipping water), dantadhāvana (tooth cleaning), snāna (bathing), tarpaṇa (satiating the ancestors with libations of water), saṃdhyā or saṃdhyopāsana (worship at the twilights) homa (fire offering), and japa (mantra recitation).