Vedic sacrifice

Intro

  • Śūdra-s could not consecrate vaidika fires and major perform vaidika sacrifices.
  • Vedic (śrauta) fire sacrifice vs non-vedic fire sacrifice
    • This distinction is crucial to this restriction, and many people are terribly confused about it. Some think that a regular “homa” fire sacrifice conducted in a home or in a temple is a “vedic” sacrifice. In fact, keeping the seasonal household sacrifices apart, major vedic yāga-s are conducted in a special temporary shelter which is burnt down at the end of the sacrifice.
    • Very few people, brāhmaṇa-s included, have ever even seen a vedic fire sacrifice, and the ritual is largely extinct amongst many communities. These sarcrifices were rare even in mideval times.

Attenuation

  • There are indications within the veda-s themselves that in early times, even śūdra-s could perform vaidika sacrifices. Also, Badarī and the Bhāradvāja śrauta sūtra disagreed with (or refined1) later exclusion; as did the Apastamba śrauta sūtra2.
  • This can’t be over-emphasized - the vedic stream did not have a monopoly on fire sacrifices! Śūdra-s could certainly perform non-vedic fire sacrifices. For example, here in this video, a Japanese Buddhist is depicted performing a homa to a buddhist deity (most likely marīcī).
  • Śūdra-s could do the daily 5 mahā-yajña-s using a non-vedic fire, as needed.

  1. These might have referred to an ancient class of śūdra-s - or specific classes thereof (niṣāda-sthapati and rathakāra). ↩︎

  2. हविष्कृदेहीति ब्राह्मणस्य हविष्कृदागहीति राजन्यस्य हविष्कृदाद्रवेति वैश्यस्य हविष्कृदाधावेति शूद्रस्य ९ प्रथमं वा सर्वेषाम् १० ↩︎