Maithil life is marked from cradle to pyre by saṃskāra — the rites of passage. Follow the journey of a life: a child welcomed with birth-songs, shorn at the Mundan, girded with the sacred thread, married in the painted Kohbar, and at the last returned to the river.
जीवन · the journey of a life
The saṃskāras — a life in rites
-
Sohar & Chhathi — welcoming a child
The birth songs and sixth-day rite by which a Maithil family welcomes a newborn.
-
Mundan — the first haircut
The child's first head-shaving, a rite of purity and passage in the early years of life.
-
Upanayan — the sacred thread
The initiation that admits a boy to formal learning, marked by the three-stranded janeu.
-
Maithil Vivah — the wedding
The multi-day Maithil marriage, matched by genealogy rather than horoscope and centred on the Kohbar.
-
Antyeshti & Shraddha — the last rites
The funeral and ancestral rites by which Mithila honours its dead and remembers its forebears.
Around the wedding
Two institutions orbit the Maithil marriage: the centuries-old genealogy that decides who may wed, and the painted chamber in which the union is sealed.
