Samskara- A Rite for a Dead Man

U.R.Ananthamurthy
 Samskara: A Rite For A Dead Man is a religious novel about a deteriorating Brahmin colony in
a south Indian village of Karnataka.
 Samskara translated into English from Kannada by A.K. Ramanujan, is a novel about
the people in an Agrahara, Brahmins, contemplating about the last rites of a dead man
of Brahmin caste but who breached his caste limits during his life time. This is also the
subtitle of the novel, Rite for a Dead Man.
 Characters:
 Praneshacharya – learned scholar and priest of Durvasapura
 Naranappa – a Brahmin who leads a non-Brahminical life
 Chandri – a dalit woman who lives with Naranappa
 Garudacharya – a relative of Naranappa
 Lakshmanacharya – a relative of Naranappa
 Dasacharya – a poor Brahmin of the agrahara
 Durgabhatta – a Smarta Brahmin living in Durvasapura
 Anasuya – wife of Lakshmanacharya
 Sitadevi _ wife of Garudacharya
 Bhagirati _ wife of Praneshacharya, an invalid
 The novel seems an accurate estimate of Brahmin society in
the 1960’s or more correctly the Brahmin societies of all
times which suffer from the serious problems of
backwardness despite having intellectuals among them.

 Their energy is directed towards maintaining age-old

convictions, beliefs, customs and superstitions.

 Ananthamurthy raises sensitive issues like rituals ,

untouchability , sex, communal feeling and human weakness
such as avarice,envy, selfishness.
Durvasapura
 The name of the agrahara is Durvasapura because of a
legendary story behind it. It was believed that Durvasa, a
sage did penance on a hillock in the river, Tunga. The place
became famous because of the legendary story and also
because of Praneshacharya.

 Praneshacharya is the wise man in the agrahara. The entire

colony came to his doorsteps every morning and evening to
listen to his recitations of holy legends.
 The story in a nutshell…
 The novel starts with the death of a member ,belonging to an
orthodox clan of Brahmins, who do not follow the established
customs.
 Naranappa is the disreputed person of the agrahara who offends
the whole community by indulging in forbidden things like wine
and women, and meat-eating.
 When he dies without an heir nobody from the Brahmin
community agrees to perform his last rites due to the fear of
disgracing their caste.
 For getting a solution, they take the problem to Praneshacharya,
the most revered person of the Agrahara.
 One day before eating his meal, Praneshacharya is going about his daily
routine. At that time, he hears the sound of Chandri behind him calling
‘Acharya’. Chandri is a dalit.
 If Praneshacharya talks to her, he would be polluted and should take bath
before eating his meal. Nevertheless, he listens to her and she informs that
Naranappa is dead after having fever for four days.
 There is a belief that it is wrong to eat food before doing the funeral rites for
the dead. So, Praneshacharya runs to Garudacharya’s house to stop him from
eating his meal and then both of them inform others in the agrahara.
 Everyone in the agrahara thinks, “Alive, Naranappa was an enemy; dead a
preventer of meals; as a corpse, a problem, a nuisance.”
 The men and their wives assemble in front of Praneshacharya’s house to hear
his directions to solve the problem of Naranappa’s rites. The women are
with fear that their husbands should not accept to do the funeral rites.
 Praneshacharya informs the people that there are two problems to be
solved. The first problem is doing funeral rites for Naranappa and second is
deciding the person for doing the rites, since Naranappa doesn’t have
children. Garudacharya, Dasacharya – a poor Brahmin of the agrahara, and
Lakshmanacharya acknowledge to the words of Praneshacharya.
Allegations against Naranappa
 People in the agrahara cannot do the rites as Naranappa had
relationship with a low-caste woman, Chandri and also ate the
food she cooked.
 Naranappa abandoned his legal wife and when she died he did
not attend her funeral.
 he does not observe the death anniversary of his parents.
 In addition to all these sacrileges acts, he has also brought
Muslims to the front yard of the agrahara to eat and drink
forbidden things.
 Praneshacharya is confused whether to proclaim Naranappa as
Brahmin or non-Brahmin.
 Fearing that the Brahmins might not do the funeral rites for
Naranappa, Chandri places all her gold ornaments in front of
Praneshacharya, to be used for the expense of Naranappa’s funeral
rites.
 While everybody thinks of a way out to do the funeral rites for
Naranappa, Dasacharya suggests the idea of requesting the
Parijatapura Brahmins to do the funeral rites for two reasons.
 The first reason is Naranappa was friendly with the Parijatapura
Brahmins
 the other reason is that the Parijatapura Brahmins are Smarta
Brahmins ,not as orthodox as the Madhvas. The Parijatapura
Brahmins are pleasure lovers and some of them are rich as they run
betelnut farms.
 The family of Lakshmanacharya and Garudacharya are perturbed
by the decision of Praneshacharya because the golden ornaments
would be taken away by the person who does the funeral rites.
 Praneshacharya goes through the palm leaf texts to find a
solution to Naranappa’s funeral rites while the Madva Brahmins
are in Parijatapura to inform about Naranappa’s death.
 The thought of Naranappa makes Praneshacharya realize how he
has been a problem all through his life.
 Praneshacharya recollects a bitter conversation when he went to
Naranappa’s house to meet him. Naranappa disrespected and
treated him with contempt.
 He also remembers how Naranappa made Garuda’s son Shyama
and Lakshmana’s son-in-law Shripati to go astray from
Brahminical tradition. Shyama ran away from home and joined
the army, while Shripati almost took the lifestyle of Naranappa.

 He even remembers the day when he brought Muslims with him

to the Ganapathi temple stream and caught the sacred
fish. During their heated conversation Naranappa has said, “I’ll
destroy Brahminism, I certainly will. My only sorrow is that there’s no
brahminism really left to destroy in this place – except you.”
 Praneshacharya does a detailed and prolonged search of the
scriptures without success. Then he retires for meditating in
the Maruti temple hoping for God's guidance for disposing
the body.
 For solving the problem the Brahmins seek help from a
colony in the neighbourhood (Parijatapura) and later, a
monastery.
 "The brahminism of your entire sect is in your hands.Your
burden is great."
 The stench of dead rats and Naranappa’s dead body makes the
night sleepless for many in the agrahara.

 Naranappa died of bubonic plague (Black Death).

 Meanwhile, there is a break out of plague in the agrahara due to

Naranappa's rotting corpse.
 Praneshacharya becomes frustrated due to his inability to
arrive at a decision. As he staggers out of the temple he sees
Chandri, the low-caste mistress of Naranappa.
Praneshacharya is physically attracted to Chandri and the two
make love, thus ending the Acharya’s celibacy.
 This incident is a turning point in Praneshacharya’s life.
Meanwhile his wife dies due to the plague. He cremates his
wife and then leaves the agrahara not able to confront the
people who had respected him until then as a learned
teacher.
 Praneshacharya, long devoted entirely to the cause and
tradition, is forced (and/or allowed) by circumstance to
question it, freed, over the course of the story, from several
of his burdens.
 However, Ananthamurthy does not offer a resolution
here: Samskara remains open-ended.
 Samskara – The Title
 Samskara means religious purificatory rites and ceremonies for
sanctifying the body , mind and intellect of an individual so that he
may become a full-fledged member of the community.
 A rite of passage or life-cycle ceremony; the realizig of past
perceptions.
 In trying to resolve the dilemma of who , if any , should perform
the death-rite ( a samskara), the Acharya begins a samskara ( a
transformation) for himself.
 Praneshacharya undergoes the process of purification. He shifts
from a hardcore ritualistic Brahmin to a realist.
 A rite for a dead man becomes a rite of passage for the living.
 In life as in death, Naranappa questioned the Brahmins of the
village, exposed their Samskara ( refinement of spirit , maturation
through many lives) or lack of it.
 Naranappa
 Naranappa a catalytic agent who affects change, favors
modernism, rejects brahminhood and brings home Chandri, a
prostitute, from Kundapura, a nearby town. He drinks alcohol
and invites muslims to eat meat.
 He throws Saligrama, the holy stone which is believed to
represent God Vishnu, into the river, and spits after it.
 If the flowers in the backyards of the other brahmins are
meant mainly for the altar, and if their women wear only
withered flowers gathered from the altar in their hair which
hangs at their back like a rat’s tail, Naranappa grows the night-
queen plant in his front garden. Its intense smelling flowers are
meant solely to decorate Chandri’s hair which lies coiled like a
thick black cobra on her back.
 Naranappa
 Naranappa, with his muslim friends catches sacred fish from the
temple tank, cooks and eats them. Other brahmins are aghast at
this sacrilegious act. They have believed, till then, that these fish
should not even be touched, that whosoever touches them will
vomit blood and will die!
 Naranappa has even corrupted the youth of the agrahara. Because
of him one young man left Durvasapura and joined the army,
where he is forced to eat beef. Another young man left his wife
and home, and joined a traveling group of singers and actors.
 Naranappa’s only ambition in life seems to do everything that
destroys the brahminhood of the agrahara. His only sorrow is that
hardly anything of it is left to destroy, except for the brahminism
of Praneshacharya.
 Orthodox society does its best t suppress the revolutionary
Naranappa and by excommunicating they want to get rid of him.
 But Praneshacharya is against this radical step. He still hopes to
win over Naranappa, and lead him back to Dharma, the proper
path.
 Ananthamurthy has invested Naranappa with reformative vigour
and violence. Naranappa is an active player in the novel. His death
puts a big question mark on the ritualistic society.
 Naranappa is an autocrat, he lives freely breaking all traditions and
practices of brahminism.
 He does what he likes without pretensions and hypocrisy. So
he seems an anti-social. But an anti-social individual is
eventually a reformer also.
 He re-orients the society – so also a spiritual man does not
conform to society either and is a leader of society.
Major Concerns
 Samskara is a fine discussion on the caste and class structure of
India.
 Through the novel Ananthamurthy explores the lack of human
concern in the Brahmin community.
 The characters in the end favour freedom from the shackles of
rituals and superstitions.
 In the beginning Naranappa is the rebel , and Praneshacharya is
the righteous Brahmin.
 After the death of his invalid wife Bhagirathi he wishes to settle
down with Chandri, the Dalit concubine.
 It is the death of Naranappa that brings out the humanity as well
as the real man out of the Acharya.
 Until then he was living a life burdened with suffocating
scriptural knowledge.
 At the end of the novel he decides to live like an ordinary man
neither a righteous Brahmin nor ‘the crest jewel of vedic
learning’.
 It is Chandri , the concubine ,who brings the Acharya down to the
land of the ordiary mortals.
 He even runs away from home after his wife dies of plague. But
wherever he goes he is haunted by the fear of discovery and
haunted by Chandri’s touch.
 The novel ends as Praneshacharya decides to return to
Durvasapura, and to own up his fall.
 But Ananthamurthy, does not answer the other important
question. It is the question of what the brahmins should do when
they are confronted with the confessions of Praneshacharya.
 What does one do when faced with such truth? As the translator
A.K. Ramanujan puts it, the novel ends, but does not conclude.
 Praneshacharya is a victim of his own fickle mind, practicing
egotism, full of fear of losing honour.
 As a normal human being he wants to enjoy all the material
pleasures centered to woman and children. But he cannot do this
because his wife is an invalid whom he nurses following the Law of
Nishkama Karma.
 The lack of sensual pleasure is creating psychological lacuna(a gap)
in him. He perceives some truth in Naranappa’s ways of life.
 When Naranappa attacks the Acharya’s reading of lush, erotic
Puranic tales and his life devoid of sexual pleasure, Acharya stops
telling the luscious Puranic stories in the evening and starts on
moral tales of penance .
 The society of Durvasapura requires immediate reform. The
novel presents a sexually suppressed society, where sex is
considered taboo, yet everyone wants to enjoy it.
 According to the Vedic system of Varnashrama, the
Brahmanas those who are by nature intellectuals,
contemplative, and inspired by acquiring spiritual and
philosophical knowledge, and motivated to work in this way
for the rest of society.
 In actual sense none of the characters in the novel except
Praneshacharya stands in favour of Brahmanism strictly.
 All the Brahmins Durgabhatta and Sripathi, Dasacharya,
Lakshmana and Garuda, are depraved and damned souls
having insatiable lust for body, food, gold and property.
 The Brahmins of the agrahara are utterly decadent, narrow-
minded, selfish, greedy, jealous. Their brahminhood consists
solely of fulfilling rules, following traditions which are
thousands of years without understanding reasons and logic
behind them. They are afraid that if the rules are not followed
disasters will fall upon them.