In an exploration of Veda pandit lives, diverse personalities and family his tories become visible, each dense with narratives regarding pursuit of the twin goals: the absorption of Veda and the flowering of a chosen ritual life. The former contains the laborious joy of paying back the debt owed for that privilege by teaching sons, grandsons, younger brothers, and often those outside the immediate family. And each pandit portrays a special ritual past and hopeful future. Within every representation a wife figures creatively as helpmeet, maternal presence, and co-sacrificer. Then it is all the chil dren, with special attention to Veda-trained sons, who enter narratives at every opportunity. Along with all the expected or unanticipated outlines, however, comes a variety of insights into life in India during the rapidly changing decades of the turn of the millennium, the 1980s, 1990s, and beyond the initial 2000 decade. An expanding economy with a cash basis, a burgeoning middle class, affirmative action for the lower classes, changes in transportation, new forms of communication including TV, then color TV and DVDs, cell phones, computers, motor vehicles. At the same time there are carry-overs of the old ways, for example, the delight of success
fully arranged marriages and the agony of the dowry system that cripples financial and emotional well-being. This chapter allows the voices of a wide range of Vedic personalities to be heard.
The accomplishments of the pandits selected here are manifold; most are well respected in South India, one being famous in Vaidika circles throughout
A Selection of Ahitagni and Other Veda Pandits 55
India. And yet there is a striking lack of pretension in their statements, a mod esty that flies in the face of their extraordinary achievements. Ethnographically speaking, their biographies are precious for they have largely escaped the atten tion of journalists and scholars alike, living in remote enclaves through the busy changing of the millennia that paid attention to the fading of the British Raj, two great wars followed by successive internecine wars in South Asia, and decades of political struggles within India itself, all widescreen panoramas with little note of a religious tradition that has lasted, by outside historical reckon
ing, over 3,700 years, and is by inside traditional accounting anadi, eternal. Selected here are ahitagni and other Veda pandits, together with some wives and children, to illustrate the activities of Veda and srauta in the delta throughout the twentieth and into the current century. In many ways their life histories are extraordinary to non-Vaidika South Asian contemporaries in New Delhi, Nagpur, or Bangalore, not to mention contemporaries in Los Angeles, Paris, or Shanghai, for whom their daily activities are entirely unimaginable. In their own eyes they have led quite ordinary, if secluded and highly disci plined, existences. Their careers should be noted and “attention should be paid,” especially to the old generation that is now almost entirely gone. Even for those families who continue a healthy transmission of Veda, if not srauta, there is a difference. A Veda pandit and patni of the present are not the same Vaidika presence as their grandparents of the early twentieth century, and clarifying this distinction is one of several aims of this study. Presented in this chapter are glimpses of life in two agrahara, Sriramapuram and Nedunuru; two villages, Vyaghresvaram and Iragavaram; a city, Kakinada; and two small temple towns, Annavaram and Simhacalam. Such a broad spec trum allows the unity as well as the surprising diversity of Veda pandit life to shine through the changes of the period under study. The following individu als speak for the most part in their own words collected over a period of three and a half decades. Their lives unfold here not as precise historical biogra phies but rather as illustrations of one or another aspect of the Vedic tradi tion, as personifications of the routines, daily dramas, rigors, and aspirations of individuals, families, and small communities vedam-lo, “existing in Veda.” Their voices will be heard briefly, with many lacunae, some oddities, some in more detail on certain subjects than others, as they provide glimpses of the changing scene of twentieth- and twenty-first century Vedic life. This chapter provides more of the historical and textual details of Veda and srauta, as well as some specific highlights of agrahara life. The backdrop for these capsule biographies is intended to give them the brightness of life and author ity. Even a small agrahara such as Sriramapuram, for example, harbored dis parate sets of Brahman families during the course of this study, each governed56 vedic voices
by special sensitivities to rank, time, space, and ritual proclivities. There was an established hierarchy, with unpublished but careful ranks within the hier archy: on a short lane with all families living within sight of one another there were ahitagni, other Veda pandits with differing degrees of accomplishment, and secular Brahmans. The ahitagni, at the top of the pecking order, included nitya agni-hotrin with active fires and twice-daily agni-hotra, but also those who because of physical incapacity allowed fires to lapse temporarily until the oppor tunity to rekindle. There were living pairs, invariably in declining years, whose fires permanently expired, and finally, ahitagni and patni widowers and widows whose hearths were erased after the death of the spouse, their srauta ritual lives
then concluded (see Figure 0.6, Sriramapuram agrahara in 1987). At the time of the first visit there were three families of ahitagni and patni living in Sriramapuram. When fires are active, the ahitagni and patni are bound in space to the threefold hearth and bound in time to performance of two or three baths daily, two sandhya-vandana daily, two agni-hotra daily, two isti monthly, and one agrayana annually. They have special relationships to Agni, Candra, anna, and Soma for those approaching or beyond agni-stoma. Those whose fires have lapsed may do mantra portions of agni-hotra without kriya, routine baths or “sponge baths” if unable to manage the river or canal, sandhya-vandana twice daily, and possible participation in agrayana. Widows are bound to the house; widowers are not. Teaching Veda pandits who are an-ahitagni, not ahitagni, are theoretically bound to the house for specified times of adhyapana and scheduled times for parayana if employed. For some, the two duties are combined while others may perform elsewhere since they are not bound in space or time to fires other than smartagni, the grhya fire, and personal programs of household worship. Finally, the majority of the families in the agrahara are laukika Brahmans with their own schedules of secular activities, including accountants, schoolteachers, and retirees. Except for per sonal vows and devotions, it is only the widows who have ritual restrictions. The survey begins with Baballa, senior ahitagni during the early years of visits and a Veda-bhasya scholar beloved throughout the delta. (See Figure 3.1, Baballa and Sundari, Sriramapuram, 1987, and Figure 3.2, Baballa, age eighty-eight, Sriramapuram 1991.)