Milk Offerings
Because of multiple meanings, the term agni-hotra, literally “offering to Agni,” often confuses those outside the sacrificial tradition, including educated Hindus. It is a liquid food offering to Agni, fresh milk or ghee poured twice daily from a havani ladle with a grooved “elephant’s tongue” spout into the
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Figure 6.1. Ladles used to make offerings into Agni, Sriramapuram 1987.
ahavaniya fire. (This ladle appears on the right in Figure 6.1.) Agni-hotra is also the triadic complex of all three fire-hearths, one or more with active embers or cooling ashes. It may be, like other sacrificial terms, a personal name, as in the son of Kapilavayi Rama Sastri and Maruti, Agnihotra Sarma. But it is above all Agni himself, the god Agni-hotra who receives the libations. In that circular sense for dedicated ahitagni it is God receiving God.
Initially established with five hearths, the domestic srauta ritual com plex is reduced to three at the close of fire setting. A decision is made about the degree of “permanence” to assign to each hearth. While some sutras require fires in all three, ApSS 6.2.13 provides relief, considering the vigi lance, labor, and expense of keeping three sets of embers, by allowing for the garha-patya alone to be safeguarded and tucked in for the dark night. Therefore when the yajamana and patni are ready at sunrise, or later at sunset, garha-patya embers dropped into the ahavaniya ignite dry straw just long enough for the milk (already heated short of boiling point, then cooled) to be offered onto the flames. Drops remaining in the ladle are consumed by the couple as a share of what Agni has just received. These196 vedic voices
drops are literally his ucchista, leavings endowed with his powers. In a simi lar fashion, when the southern fire (daksina-agni) is required, garha-patya embers are distributed there.
In the evening agni-hotra mantras are addressed to Agni, then Prajapati, lord of sacrifice, while at dawn they go to Surya, the rising sun, and again to Prajapati. In both offerings preparatory gestures include the placement of blades of darbha grass and tosses of water from the fingers of the right hand of the sacrificer around the molded frames of the three hearths. In houses where there is more than one nitya-agni-hotrin the rites can be simultaneous, as in the case of the Dendukuri family in Vijayawada today where the hearth com
plexes in the spacious but well-trafficked agni-hotra room are only three feet apart. Baballa was one of six brothers, all of them nitya-agni-hotrin like their father, and he remembers an extraordinary array of hearths and murmurs of simultaneous mantras.
Sutras discuss the cooperation of an adhvaryu in agni-hotra but for most families the brief rite is private like the sandhya-vandana that accompanies it and no rtvij is required. Eligible sons or former students on occasion, however, might take the adhvaryu role in order to sit beside their fathers or gurus. The cooperation of patnis is normative but also optional, not requisite. Subbalaksmi, for example, went to the puja corner to perform vaisva-deva, a token offering of milk or curds for “all gods,” both evening and morning while Bulusu Cayanulu simultaneously did agni-hotra alone inside the ritual room.
On the other hand, Renducintala Yajulu and Laksmikanta were so closely bound that late in life when he was crippled she held onto him, managed the fire, and ladled milk from the terra-cotta pot into the fire while he did the mantras. Early mornings are suitable for honoring the sun since Surya namas-kara (now familiar to tens of thousands of Westerners taking yoga classes) is a standard prayer greeting to the rising sun, as customary as the sandhya-vandana. If an offering is being made in the agni-hotra room then sunrise becomes an occasion for family worship, some inside the house, some outside.
Agni-hotra quickly becomes routine and may occur as many as 22,000 times in the thirty-year career of a faithful ahitagni and spouse. In Bringing the Gods to Mind, Laurie Patton employs her title to concentrate on the applica tion of mantras in rituals. It might be said that Agni has never left the mind of the true agni-hotrin. In a cowshed attached to the house most ahitagni keep an “agni-hotra cow” for the two daily offerings. Although ghee may be offered, or even curds or barley gruel, the libation is usually milk, liquid food, pre cious to families today as it was for cattle herders in antiquity. It is shared in
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communion with Agni before any other food in the evening prior to the main meal and again in the morning to begin a new day. Henk Bodewitz under stands the historic function of the agni-hotra as “a transference of the sun (the heated milk) into Agni,” the evening or primary rite being a transport of the sun “already weakened at the end of the day, through the dangerous darkness and coolness of the night.”9 Konasima ahitagni appreciate this but their over whelming interest is in serving the culinary needs of Agni just as they supply his body with kindling food and carry away from his sacred space the residue, his ashes.
If agni-hotra is not done for three days the fires are vicchinna, interrupted, literally cut or broken, and rekindling must be done with specific expiations, prayascitta, for the lapse. Legitimate occasions for a break in the routine include deaths or births in the family causing pollution (asauca, Telugu maila) when no ritual of any kind is permissible. Several provisions allow for a sus
pension of rules and these are invoked liberally today when travel is easier and families are more widely dispersed than a generation or two ago. As men tioned in Chapter 5, when the ahitagni is away from home he may perform agni-hotra in advance and his wife will maintain the hearths: paksa homa for a fortnight, masa homa for a month. If the husband is “out of station” for any extended period he must return for one or the other moon isti since the wife should not do this two-hour ritual alone. The use of expiation rites is frequent and these consist of silent or muttered recitations (japa), meditations, and offerings into the fire such as an isti known as ijya. The definition of a “con
tinuous” or nitya-agnihotrin remains fuzzy since incapacitated elders who do mantras only and not the milk offering into the fire may be included in the prestigious category.
Agni’s embers can be transferred not only hearth-to-hearth but also site-to site. Three terra-cotta pots are hung from slings, marked by initials with names of each fire, and carried to the burning ground in a funeral proces sion, and the same procedure may be used by an ahitagni if he is traveling to a sabha or a son’s marriage, for example. It is said that this occurs even on a train, albeit with surreptitious care! A less dangerous (and disputed) solution to the dilemma of maintaining agni-hotra while absent from home hearths is a mystical-ritual drawing of the fire up and into the churning sticks, the two arani, while they are held over it, or alternatively, into the body of the sacrifi cer himself, a technique known as atma-rohana. Either way the fires are then released elsewhere on prepared hearths.
As noted in Chapter 2, some in Konasima attribute this to outsider families “who have incorrect procedures.” But ApSS 6.28.8–14 provides details about the effect of mantras from TB 1 and 2 causing fire to rise and
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descend. A homology between the churning sticks and the sacrificer’s body is clear: both are temporary repositories of the fires. Perhaps here is the ori gin of the ubiquitous Hindu puja practice of open palms quickly touching fire and then one’s face. This is Apastamba’s directive to the sacrificer before going away overnight, breathing on them, praising them, touching them and then his face.
The benefits of agni-hotra are a frequent topic of conversation on pandit verandahs. As the planet Earth appears to ease from day to night and then back again at the two “joints” of twilight and dawn, so too the family home participates with conjunctive rituals of sandhya-vandana and agni-hotra. “Even if a house is full of faults or sins (dosa) from the perspective of geomancy (vastu), agni-hotra fires will guard it, absolving the faults of the day in the eve
ning rite, the faults of night-time at dawn.” This observation by Samavedam came with concern about his own house when neither he nor his Vedapandit sons aspired to setting fires. But the fact that three agni-hotrin neighbors were within sight of his verandah eased his mind.
The belief that nothing bad can happen in a house where agni-hotra is performed, with assured personal protection, resembles nearby non-Brahman folk who hang baskets containing the jute ropes of the neighborhood goddess Gangamma to protect their houses from all misfortune. “Death does not reach him . . . who offers agni-hotra,” according to Vadhula Sutra 3.27.10 It is small wonder that ahitagni and patni may spend thousands of hours in the hearth room feeding and caring for Agni, not only Lord of the house but protector of the entire neighborhood as well.
The agni-hotra should be done until physical incapacity prevents necessary movement in the ritual room. Without kriyas, however, the rite can still con tinue with mantras only. Until he lost his memory Lanka did such a mantra performance for years after his inability to stand up without pain. In their declining years Pullela Laksminarayana and Kamesvari rekindled for agrayana every autumn, continued normal agni-hotra every day until the next amavasya or purnima, then did mantras without kriyas as a daily pattern. This recalls the adhana in which a mental run-through of agni-hotra occurs even before fires are established.
Smoke from indoor fires may present problems. Baballa had very poor eyesight. Duvvuri Yajulu went completely blind during the course of inter views for this survey, although his wicked sense of humor continued to make Telugu puns on sneezing and being smoked, referring to dhuuma, smoke, as his constant companion. At the time of agni-hotra there is a rule that an ahi tagni should not go beyond the village boundary and his wife should not go beyond the border of the property for their house.11
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