Rituals of Childhood 

The classical Hindu texts define the various age-specific stages of an individual in terms of the appropriate norms, roles, values, and duties, and the transition from one stage to the next is marked by the saṃskāras, the Hindu life-cycle rituals. We find explanations of the saṃskāras mainly in the Gṛhyasūtras (these text are mainly concerned with the rituals of the twice-born c…