समावर्तन

Samavartana is the fourteenth samskara, the rite of returning home after study. The word means turning back, since the student comes back from the teacher's household to ordinary society. It ends the student stage, brahmacharya, and prepares the young man for grihastha, the householder stage. Tradition puts it at the close of formal studies, originally around the age of twenty-five, so it plays the role of a graduation in the life-cycle sequence.

In the outline, the student takes a ceremonial bath, which gives him the title snataka, one who has bathed, or graduate. He lays aside the staff and deerskin of the student, receives new garments and ornaments, gives the guru his dakshina, and is released from the ashram. The teacher's farewell advice, known from the Taittiriya Upanishad tradition, is often cited in this connection, though that link is only a general association. The texts say that the graduate is now eligible for marriage.

A separate Samavartana is hardly ever held in current life. Still, the pattern lives on in convocation ceremonies, where gowns, certificates and blessings from teachers echo the older bath, new clothes and gift to the guru. Some Veda schools still hold a formal ceremony when a student completes the course. For other families the idea may be kept as a prayer of thanks to teachers before a young person starts a career or begins to think of marriage.