When Lanka was judged by his guru, Baballa’s father, to have completed the Taittiriya curriculum he could then go home, put behind him those long daily walks in darkness between Mukkamala and Nedunuru, eat his own mother’s evening meals, and await his examination by a Veda pandit review
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board.But first there was a marker for this momentous occasion, sama-vartana, the “return” from the guru’s house. The focus was a ritual bath, snana, when he received the title snataka, one who has undergone the well-earned bath. It was a graduation ceremony with a tonsure, shaving of head and facial hair by the barber, bathing, applying sandal paste and perfumes to his body and kol to his eyes, putting on two new garments and earrings, first the right, then the left, new chappals for his feet, and a garland that he placed on his own neck. At hand were an umbrella and his staff. Finally, he took a mirror and checked out his appearance, makeup and all. The brahmacarin vow of celibacy was over and he was now free to marry. The entire day was spent indoors behind the pen for the agni-hotra cow, shielded from the sun, and he could move about only after sundown and sandhya-vandana.
Lanka was of course part of the “old school.” Today most Vedic students indulge only symbolically in “return” since Veda learning with their fathers occurs at home. The ritual bath, however, prevails and still follows AGS 12.1– 1.4, including the feasting of the boy in the company of a number of neighbor hood Brahmans. He hears himself described as one with “divine splendor.” The daily chores he has done all these years are behind him and may now go to a younger brother. Inattention to personal appearance, part of the rigorous celibate vow, ends abruptly. Well after the age when testosterone kicked in, the new graduate may now entertain without shame thoughts of sleeping with his bride. They were small children when they married but, if he got lucky, from time to time at social or ritual gatherings he may have caught precious glimpses of her from another room or another house and noticed her gradual flowering into a young woman. Those not so fortunate never see their wives between marriage and the day, many years later, of ritual consummation and establishment of a new household fire.9