उपवीतम्

IE Times

Many hold that there might have been a common ancestral IE ritual girdle or upper garment. While this is possible we don’t have preservation of a certain crucial branches to to say muich. The the band on the special upper toga of the Roman flamen dialis called toga praetexta and the special apron worn over it called the limes suggests that indeed there was some ancient IE ritual vesture that eventually evolved into the girdle or yaj~nopavIta.

I-Ir times

The clearest evidence is for a common custom from the Indo-Iranian ancestral period.

  1. Arya & Ir have a special ceremony upanayana or its equivalent when the cord is conferred.
  2. The Arya cord has 3 strands for 3 types of mantra-s while the Ir cord has 72 strands which are homologized by dastur-s with the 72 chapters of the yasna-haptangaiti, their yajuSh equivalent.
  3. In the early medieval period u2 converts used to insult Ir dastur-s by placing cord on donkeys just like Dravidianists in TN.
  4. In the Ir ceremony the individual receives 2 items a kusti (Parsi=aiwiyanghana ->skt avya~Nga) and a sadreh or sadIg (an upper garment). Arya similarly receives 3 items, ajina (deer/antelope pelt upper garment); upavIta and mekhala.
  5. In both traditions the aiwiyanghana or upavIta are worshiped while worn. The Ir version like the mekhala is said to protect the wearer from evils and also demons like shaotaena (satan).
  6. The dastur-s hold that it was promulgated by the Iranian manu, i.e. manush chithra for daily worship. upavIta is associated with daily worship of saMdhyA among Arya-s. The Iranian however unties it & reties it every day multiple times. he makes 3 circuits around the waist of the thread while tying imitating the 3 strands of the Arya upavIta.

In conclusion I do think there was an I-Ir concept of upavIta and ajina with the former being a cord and the later an upper garment. I suspect that in the Indo-Aryan side the cord’s function was split up between the mekhala and upavIta and the upavIta shifted to a ajina like position. Iranians say that it should be worn all the time. That is the general Arya belief too even if not codified. Hence, I think that too was ancestral to I-Ir.

सूत्रेषूल्लेखः

  • Some sUtra-s do recognize the existence of a cord as upavIta.
    • e.g. gobhila: यज्ञोपवीतं कुरुते सूत्रं वस्त्रं वा ऽपि वा कुशरज्जुम् एव। so it could be a sUtra or a rajju.
    • khAdira has: यज्ञोपवीतं सौत्रं कौशं वा ग्रीवायाम् प्रति-मुच्य दक्षिणं बाहुम् उद्धृत्य यज्ञोपवीती भवति। सव्यं प्राचीनावीती। This clearly shows again - sautram - that a thread was used. That is keeping with the ancestral reconstruction.
  • Now, upavIta-dhAraNa mantra is in saMhitA of yajuSh and RV khila (practiced), AV saMhitA (practiced). So put together the tradition can be seen as ancestral.

What biology has taught us is that not all ancestral traits are reconstructible from absolute conservation. If we went by that we would say that the last ancestor of all life forms had only translation apparatus and RNA polymerase. But we can by logic infer there was more and reconstruct those probabilistically from less perfectly preserved components. This applies for basic rites like saMdhyA which were definitely there at least in the I-Ir ancestor.