Long walks on rain-drenched roads from Nedunuru to Vyaghresvaram allow the traveler to see the ways the local folk make their living. Coffee-colored mud trying with every step to suck chappals from feet, bursts of showers send ing rivulets into shoulder ponds, jade leaves of tapioca gleaming in sporadic sunlight, scenes heightened every few hundred meters by vistas of a score of women bent over rice transplants, their brilliant red, yellow, and blue saris shouting over the passionate green of the fields. Well ahead is the harvest sea son when lines of men will move at a steady trot, balancing loads of this paddy on their heads, aiming for a far corner of the field where bullock carts wait for the next load. Never a tractor in any of these expanses. This tropical hike in part follows the same track as Lanka half a century ago trudging to and from his Veda lesson of the day. The village of Mukkamalla bustles. A woman at the well filling her brass lota douses all her neighbors within a hundred meters with salty invectives. A boy of perhaps nine years swings a massive hammer onto the glowing ruby iron on his father’s anvil. He will do this every day for another fifty years, performing his duty, in the parlance of the Gita, even as another nine-year-old acts according to his dharma by reciting back the fourth kanda of the Taittiriya Samhita.
A great yellow Tata truck fills the Sriramapuram lane beside an immense mound of coconuts from surrounding orchards, reminding an observer that the learning of Veda and performing of offerings are not the only activities here in the agrahara. Sweating brown men in skimpy loincloths punch the heavy nuts onto sharp spears standing upright in the ground as others collect milk and meat or strip husks to load the truck for sale in Hyderabad. Coir will soon be turned into doormats for American, European, and other markets. As mentioned before, a tongue-in-cheek Telugu proverb ranks a coconut tree as more reliable than a son. The coconut haul, like the great stacks of paddy in burlap bags at the time of the two rice harvests, affirms the agrahara as a productive segment of one of India’s choicest agricultural zones.
Economic aspects of Vedic life are not favorite topics of discussion for pan dits although many will point to financial insecurity when attempting to explain the disappearance of agni-hotrin and extended sacrifices from Konasima. Most give credit to the TTD parayana scheme and affirm the honoraria, pension plans, and other subsidies that enable pandits to teach their sons and others, maintaining the Taittiriya texts despite a declining ritual tradition. The transi tion to a cash economy in the late twentieth century was overwhelming to a number of families. Samavedam, as noted in Chapter 3, was a good illustra tion of the dilemma, attempting to teach sons and grandsons while feeding
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and clothing an extended family, trying to reconcile two demands, adhyapana at home and paid recitations away from the agrahara.
The founding of two Brahman agrahara, Sriramapuram in 1955 by the Dokka family and Kamesvari in 1960 by Nedunuri Srirama Murti, occurred with the generous notion of providing subsistence to qualified pandits, many of them entirely devoted to Veda and srauta. The dana for each pandit selected, eventually fourteen in Sriramapuram and five in Kamesvari, included a half or full acre of agricultural land with a respectable yield, a house site, and Rs. 1,000 for construction of a new house. The disposition of land, a valuable possession in an agricultural region, had different histories over the genera tions as each family grew, divided, traded, sold, and experimented with crops. All the pandits either rented out their acreage for others to work for a por
tion of the yield or became “gentlemen farmers” who supervised kuli labor ers from the abundant supply of low-caste families in the area. According to varnasrama-dharma, the laws of class and stage of life, a Brahman may not directly cultivate the land.
Some pandits have been more intensely engaged in agriculture than oth ers. Lanka and Baballa were both true hands-on farmers who monitored every crop through its seasonal changes. Lanka inherited six and a half acres from his father and could see all of it from his study, expecting the fine yield of twenty bags of paddy per acre each harvest as well as robust production from coconut palms. As a boy he watched his father manage the local S.C. (Scheduled Caste) labor crews from dawn to dusk regulating irrigation ditches, then plowing and harrowing with bullocks tugging carved wooden plows, then seeding and transplanting by teams of women, then harvesting, winnowing, and bagging with additional migrant labor. When he took charge he imitated Baballa by turning crop fields into office space where he could teach students, consult with colleagues, counsel folk who came unannounced to the local sage for advice, watch over the laborers and negotiate prices with merchants. The half-acre of land that came with the original donation he turned over to a ten
ant farmer who paid with either paddy or cash. Intercropping of cocoa plants, tapioca, or gherkin cucumbers between coconut palms was one experimental technique, as were additional crops such as green grams, mangoes, sugar cane, and tobacco. Fear of drought, so prevalent inland in Telangana, is sel dom in mind for those in water-rich Konasima. In fact, local Veda pandits are sometimes recruited to cure drought-stricken areas. A visit to Tirupati on November 17, 1980, revealed among the sixteen pandits praising the gods in a Varuna-puja several pandits included in this study.
Veda pandits in general have strong attachment to and concern for the land and its produce. Duvvuri Yajulu spoke of ksema, the peace, security, and
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welfare of the land (desa), and Lanka had intense respect for the traditions of landholding, refusing to turn to the new hybrid seeds that were claiming responsibility for India’s green revolution. “That seed is not native but for eign,” he objected. He used bovine manure only and cited Dharma Sastras that confirmed his view that synthetic pesticides and chemical fertilizers damage the soil and produce unhealthy food. A buffalo or cow gave milk for
agni-hotra and the family, any excess not to be sold but to be given to others. If one follows agricultural reports on production in Konasima, Lanka’s organic farming principles may have cost him considerable rupees. Despite his farm income and the minor earnings in honoraria for rtvij service and examiner’s fees he stated with equanimity that he had been in debt his entire life. Not long after his death Anasuya complained about the oppressive dabbu (money) culture of modern India and the distasteful necessity of soliciting rupees for sacrifices. That, she explained, is the reason we did not perform them ourselves after agni-stoma.
After years of working his land Baballa sold it when he was crowded out by squatters. Samavedam, perhaps the shrewdest Veda pandit when it came to finances, also sold his plot in order to buy a smaller one with a better yield from a tenant farmer. He reported that he had to pay Rs. 43,000 for the mar
riages of his first and second daughters and had to scour much of the east coast picking up honoraria for recitations, a practice his sons continue today. Bulusu Cayanulu first sold his inherited lands and then the agrahara donation to pay the marriage expenses of a daughter, after that struggling to remain within the budget of a TTD salary and occasional sabha honoraria. Duvvuri Yajulu was the last of the Sriramapuram Veda pandits to keep his original acre. His third son, Surya Prakasa Avadhani, has been fortunate in living in a splendid agrahara-like compound in the town of Rajahmundry, rent-free as long as he teaches Veda. He and other middle-aged pandits such as the two Kapilavayi brothers and the five Gullapalli brothers, each of these seven living in a substantial modern house, have ever known the penury of their elders. The Kapilavayi brothers entered TTD salaried employment early in their careers and can look forward to pensions when they retire from temple service. Fulfillment of ahitagni and patni aspirations appears to be imminent for Rama Sastri and Maruti.
The agrayana harvest sacrifice, to be considered more carefully in Chapter 6, is the most important obligatory ritual for ahitagni beyond agni-hotra and lunar isti. Until recent years it was also an annual domestic ritual for many Brahmans with only a single fire. So significant is agrayana that many strug
gling with the incapacities of old age make special efforts to complete it every year either on new- or full-moon days of Asviyuja or Karttika in the autumn,
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or Phalguna in the spring, rekindling lapsed fires just for this. Baballa and Sundari, for example, continued until he was eighty-seven, in a special sala constructed in front of the house. Blind Duvvuri Yajulu, the effervescent granddaughters of Baballa– Rekha, Madhuri, and Kalyani– giggling furiously around him, declared that 80 percent of the benefits go to the community and insisted on performance of agrayana to the end. No one may eat the new rice until it is offered in a rite that takes two or three hours, and of course no one may eat rice at any time without being in a state of ritual purity. The connec
tions between the land, the people, and food are always palpable. As noted in the second section of Chapter 2 the entry into pandits’ lives and fortunes of the Tirupati-Tirumalai Devasthanam (TTD) and the Andhra Pradesh Charitable and Hindu Religious Institutions and Endowments Acts made all the difference for the recent generations. The officers of the temple famous for its wealth channeled funds for decades into promoting “Vedic culture” through salaries, pensions, and honoraria to Veda pandits for special or daily recitations (parayana) or, more recently, for their publica tions and other accomplishments. As noted earlier, opinions of the overall impact of these programs has been mixed. Some see a waning Vedic tradi tion saved by temple and government largesse, and point to historic sup port for Veda pandits mentioned in sthala-purana and inscriptions such as the Simhacalam temple appropriation from its treasury for Veda adhyaya dated 1383.14 Many Andhra pandits signed on to the recitation schedule. Samavedam, for example, the most eager participant, started at age thirty and remained until he died. Duvvuri Yajulu, Cayanulu, and Mitranarayana received the higher ahitagni salaries and served until incapacities became restrictive and they accepted pensions. For them it was a worthwhile pro gram. And without doubt the TTD also succeeded at inserting Vedic tradi tion into popular culture. Cassette recorded recitations are heard on local bathing ghats and every important temple in Andhra dramatizes one to four different Vedas being recited live.
On the other hand, the TTD is blamed by some for interfering with tradi tions regarded as reclusive, virtually secretive, away from public scrutiny and institutional control. Baballa and Lanka were among those who rejected offers to become, as they saw it, “employees” of the TTD who descend into “selling” the Veda in exchange for a steady income. They also worried about invita tions to young pandits from Hindu temples in New York, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Houston, and other American cities. “Only in the isolation of an agra hara,” elders said, “away from worldly distractions, can an ahitagni survive. Our young men will go there and not return and that will mean the destruc tion of srauta as well as the teaching of Veda here.”
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