First, the thing that matters most: you do not have to arrange this yourself
If your family is travelling to Gaya through a Tirth Purohit, the samagri is arranged here and comes with the rite. Nobody expects you to carry rice, til, kush or ghee across the country in a suitcase. Everything the vidhi needs is sourced locally, in the form and quality the rite calls for, and it is kept ready for the day.
So this article exists for a different reason. It is here so that when you sit at the ghat and the Pandaji places something in your hand, you know what it is and why it is being offered. A family that understands the rite performs it with attention instead of anxiety, and that is the whole purpose of reading this beforehand.
One more thing to set aside at the start. You will not find exact quantities anywhere in this article, and you should be careful of any list that gives them. How much of what is used depends on the vidhi chosen, the number of vedis, the number of ancestors named and the tradition the purohit follows. The items are constant; the measure is not.
The pind itself: what it is made of and what it stands for
The pind is the centre of everything else. It is a small round offering shaped by hand, most commonly from cooked rice, and in many traditions from barley flour instead. Black til is mixed into it or offered along with it, and honey, milk and ghee are given as it is placed. Water accompanies every step.
Every one of these is ordinary household food, and that is deliberate. What sustains the living is what is offered to the ancestors. There is no idol, nothing rare, nothing costly. The round form stands for the body that no longer exists, and the belief is that the offering gives the subtle form of the departed the support and strength it needs before moving on. This is also why the karta shapes it with his or her own hands rather than having it handed over ready.
The exact composition is not fixed across India. Some traditions use rice where others use barley; some add jau ka sattu, some do not; the sequence in which honey, milk and ghee are given varies as well. None of this is a discrepancy. Your Pandaji follows the vidhi his family has followed here for generations, and he will tell you at each step what to take in the hand and when to release it.
Kush: the grass that makes the seat and the ring
Kush is a long, stiff grass, and it appears in almost every pitru karma performed in this land. In tradition it is treated as inherently pure — a material that holds sanctity rather than absorbing impurity — which is why it is used to make the surface on which the pind is placed and the ring the karta wears on the finger during the rite.
That ring is called the pavitri. It is worn on the ring finger of the right hand and, in the traditional understanding, keeps the hand fit to make offerings through the length of the rite. Kush is also held in the palm during tarpan, along with water and black til, so that the offering passes over it as it is released.
There is a further reason it is used. Kush is spoken of as the seat prepared for the ancestors themselves — the place made ready so that they may be present where they are being invited. A family seeing it for the first time often thinks it is simply a mat. It is not; it is part of the invitation.
Black til and water: the offering of tarpan
Tarpan means to satisfy, to quench. The karta joins the palms, takes water with black til and kush in them, and releases it in the name of the ancestors — father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and the same line on the mother's side, generation by generation as the Pandaji names them. At Gaya this is traditionally done at the bank of the Falgu, and it usually opens the day before the pinds are shaped.
Til runs through the whole of the rite and not only through tarpan. It is mixed with the pind, it is given with the water, and it is present at nearly every offering made in the ancestors' name. In tradition black sesame is regarded as the grain of purity and of that which does not perish, and it is held to be dear to the pitru — which is why it recurs where almost nothing else does.
The water itself is not incidental either. The Falgu is the antah-salila of the texts — for most of its history families dug a small hollow in the sand to reach it, and that act of reaching for the water was part of the devotion. Since the Gayaji Dam was completed in 2022 there is water at the Vishnupad ghat through the year; the tarpan is the same, offered now from the steps of a built ghat.
Flowers, cloth and thread
Flowers are offered at the sankalp and again with the pind, and white flowers are generally preferred for ancestral rites. Tulsi patra is used where the tradition asks for it, and dhoop and a lamp are lit alongside. These are the parts of the arrangement a family notices first, and they are also the simplest — plain flowers, plainly offered, with no decoration for its own sake.
Cloth appears in two different roles and it helps to keep them apart. A piece of cloth, usually white, is used within the vidhi itself — spread where the offering is made, or given as part of the offering. Separately, vastra is given as daan at the close of the rite, which is a different thing altogether and is described in the next section.
The janeu, the sacred thread, has its own place. Where the karta wears one, it is worn in the particular manner the pitru karma prescribes, over the right shoulder rather than the left, and it may be changed for a fresh one during the rite. If this applies to your family the Pandaji will say so and show you how; if it does not, nothing is missing.
What is given as daan at the close
Daan is not part of the samagri, but families often confuse the two, so it is worth separating. Samagri is what the rite is performed with. Daan is what is given away once it is complete — traditionally vastra, anna, and other customary items given according to the family's capacity and its own practice.
Brahmin bhojan is commonly part of this closing portion of the day. In the traditional understanding, what is served with respect to a Brahmin after shraddha reaches the ancestors, which is why families treat the meal as part of the offering rather than as hospitality afterwards. Some families also make a gau daan or give grain, and both are long-established.
How much daan is given, and of what, is not fixed by any list. It has always been understood in terms of what the family can give with a full heart, and it is neither a measure of devotion nor a condition of the rite. If you want to know what is customary for the rite you have chosen, ask while planning, so that the day itself passes without any conversation about it.
What the family genuinely brings, and only the family can bring
This is the practical heart of the matter, and it is very short. The first thing is the names. The names of the ancestors you are offering for, on the father's side and, where your family observes it, the mother's side as well — usually three generations, more if you know them. Ask the eldest person in the family a week before you travel, write the names down as they were actually used at home, and carry that paper with the karta. These names are spoken aloud in the sankalp, and no purohit in Gaya can supply them.
The second is the gotra, and the karta's own name with it. If the gotra is genuinely not known, that is not an obstacle; by long-accepted practice Kashyap gotra is taken in such cases and the rite proceeds normally. But tell the Pandaji before the sankalp rather than discovering it midway. Alongside the names, keep whatever details of the departed you have — the relation, and the tithi or punya tithi if the family remembers it.
The third is clothing suitable for the rite. Men usually wear a dhoti and gamchha, women a simple saree or salwar; heavy stitched clothing is avoided and colours are kept plain. Carry one dry change, since a river bath is part of the day, and remember that the ghats and temple precincts are walked barefoot.
And the fourth is an open mind about local custom. Gaya has its own way of doing things, and it may not match exactly what your family does at home or what a relative told you on the phone. Both can be correct. Ask the Pandaji why something is done a particular way — he will explain it gladly — but do not arrive prepared to correct him. Some families also bring a little earth from the courtyard of the ancestral house, where their tradition asks for it, so that the home the ancestors lived in is present at the offering. If your family has such a practice, mention it while planning.
You do not need to buy anything at the vedis
Around the sacred sites you will find people selling ritual items and telling you, with some urgency, that what you have is insufficient or that one more thing must be added right now. Most of the time the family has already been provided with everything the vidhi needs, and nothing further is required at the ghat.
The way through this is calm and simple. Keep your samagri with your own group. If someone tells you an item is missing, do not decide there — step aside and ask your own Pandaji, who knows exactly what your sequence needs. Anything genuinely required can be explained without hurry and can wait five minutes. Decide in advance that one family member, not the karta, handles every conversation with outsiders, so the karta is never drawn away from the rite.
None of this is a reason to be suspicious of everyone at the site. Many of those around the ghats are genuinely helpful, and the town lives by this pilgrimage. It is only a reason not to make purchases under pressure, on a day when your attention belongs somewhere else.
What changes from one rite to another
The samagri is not one fixed set. A single-day Gaya Shraddha across Falgu, Vishnupad and Akshay Vat uses what those three offerings call for. A three-day or sixteen-day observance, with more vedis added in their prescribed order, uses more of the same things and, at some vedis, things that only that vedi asks for. The longer the sequence, the larger the arrangement.
Rites of a different kind need a different set altogether. Tripindi Shraddha offers three pindas of three different grains — barley, rice, and sesame with gur — one each to Vishnu, Brahma and Rudra, so the samagri for it is not the samagri for an ordinary pind daan. Narayan Bali, considered where a death was untimely or the last rites could not be completed, is a distinct vidhi and its samagri is distinct too. Ekoddishta, directed at one named person rather than the lineage, is smaller in scope. These are not versions of the same thing with more or less added.
This is exactly why a general list is of limited use to any one family, and why the arrangement is made after the rite is decided rather than before. Settle which vidhi your family needs, in conversation with the Purohit and with the elders at home, and the samagri follows from that decision on its own.