Chudakarana, also called mundan, is the first ceremonial shaving of a child's head, one of the Hindu life-cycle rites, generally performed in the first or third year. The infant's birth hair is removed, sometimes leaving a small tuft (shikha), with prayers for the child's long life, health and prosperity, and the shorn hair may be offered at a temple or river. The rite is widely understood as a purification, removing what is felt to be carried over from birth and past lives and marking a fresh stage in the child's growth. Its performance is often tied to particular sacred places or family deities, and many families make a pilgrimage to fulfil it at a temple to which they are devoted. Like the other samskaras it is set out in the classical ritual texts and remains commonly observed across Hindu communities, with wide regional variation in its timing, setting and accompanying customs.
Chudakarana is one of the sixteen classical samskaras, life-cycle rites, catalogued in the dharmasastra literature; the scholar Pandurang Vaman Kane, in his History of Dharmasastra, traced the rite's prescription back through the grihyasutras, the household ritual manuals composed in the final centuries BCE, which already specify the child's age and the retention of a tuft of hair. The rite was traditionally performed for boys as a mark of the beginning of formal upbringing, though contemporary practice in many Hindu communities has extended the ceremony, in a modified form, to girls as well, a change reflecting a broader modern loosening of samskaras that were historically gender-specific.