Hospitality according to Vishnu Purana

[Guest guest]

Dear bhagavattotamas, please accept my humble obeisance - for your

edification I would like to submit another offering from the Vishnu Purana

on hospitality. No where else in the dharma shastras is it so elaborately

explained as in the V.P.

 

Hospitality

 

The householder is then (after sandhya and vaisvadeva bali) to remain in

his courtyard to await a stranger (atithi), for as long as it takes to milk

a cow (about 12 minutes) or longer if he chooses. If a stranger comes he

must be worshiped and welcomed with all due hospitality. He must be offered

a seat, and his feet are to be washed. Food should be respectfully served

and he should be engaged in pleasant conversation. When he departs, he

should be lovingly farewelled ‹ the host accompanying him (for a short

distance). The householder should always welcome and venerate with great

care as a guest that stranger who comes from another country and whose name

and family are not known. A fellow villager is never considered a guest

(atithi). He who eats, neglecting an unknown stranger, who is poor and

friendless, and who is desirous of eating, goes to hell. VP 3:11:56 - 60

 

The stranger, who being disappointed, leaves a house and goes elsewhere,

transfers his own demerit to the owner of the house and takes away the

house-holder's merit.

Brahma, Prajapati, Indra, Agni, the Vasus and Aryama are ever present in the

person of a stranger/guest share the food that is offered to him. Therefore

O best of men! One should assiduously discharge the duties of hospitality;

for one, who eats without giving any to a stranger/guest, feeds upon sin.

Thereupon the householder must satisfy with well-prepared meals the young

married woman (suvasini), the unwell (duhkhi), the pregnant woman

(garbhini), the aged (vrddha) and the children (balaka) of the house and

then only he himself should eat. The householder, who eats without first

feeding these, feeds upon his own iniquity and after his death is condemned

to hell to feed upon phlegm. He, who eats, without performing ablutions,

feeds upon filth; he, who eats without doing japa, feeds upon pus and blood;

one who eats unblessed food, drinks urine; and he, who eats before the

infants and the others (mentioned previously) is doomed in hell to live on

excrement. (V.P. 3:11:67 ­ 71)

 

In the evening, the householder, should again, according to his means show

hospitality to any stranger/guest who may come, receiving him with the

salutation of evening and offering him water to wash his feet, a seat,

supper and a bed. The sin, consequent upon not receiving hospitably the

stranger who comes after sunset, is eight times greater than that of

neglecting one who comes during the day, A person should therefore show

particular respect to one who seeks refuge after sunset, for by venerating

him all the gods are venerated. The householder should therefore according

to his means, give a stranger/guest rice, vegetables, water, a bed, a mat,

or if he cannot give any thing more, a space on the ground upon which to

lie. (V.P. 3:11:103 - 107)

 

 

Dasanudasan

 

Sri Rama