Another full set of rituals is the observation of a new three-month season every four months, the series known as catur-masya. In Konasima there is near uni formity of days and nights, twelve hours each, the sun rising or setting about six o’clock year round with none of the daylight and darkness fluctuations of climates farther north or south. The seasons change, however, each with a special character, the rapidly accelerating heat of the New Year from March to June (Caitra, Vaisakha, Jyestha), the breaking of heat with the monsoon rainy season (Asadha, Sravana, Bhadrapada), a cool-down for the autumn harvest (Asvina, Karttika, Margasirsa), and the coldest months giving way to spring and another New Year’s festival on Ugadi (Pausa, Magha, Phalguna).
The formative period of Vedic India, developing in the northwest of the subcontinent, marked seasonal changes every four months (catur masya), with rites in the isti pattern connected to sowing and harvesting of crops in spring (vasanta), rains (varsa), and autumn (hemanta). The series is concluded with the suna-siriya ritual and offerings to Vayu, Indra Sunasiriya, and Surya. The
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two deities Suna and Sira occur in RV 4.57, an agrarian hymn addressed to them as well as to Ksetrapati, lord of the crop field, and Sita, the plowed fur row. There is also mention of Parjanya and Indra, responsible for necessary rains for fruitful harvests, and Pusan, bringer of prosperity, one closely related to the sun. Wealth in the form of plentiful harvests and herds appears to be the
raison d’être of this early hymn and the seasonal rituals that ensued. Although their seasons are at variance with the Rg Vedic series Konasima pandits are entirely familiar with all the deities and their forms of blessings. It must be said, however, that they have treated the seasonal rites with circum spection, performing the series once only or not at all and preferring to invest more energy and emotion in the agrayana harvest ritual. Baballa and Lanka did each of the catur-masya a single time while Bulusu Cayanulu, considerably vexed in later years about their absence from his record, seemed always to be planning implementation in the form of a single five-day ritual. In February 1992, five years before his sudden heart attack, Cayanulu’s explanation hinged on the degree of difficulty involved: “They are not straightforward rituals like agni-stoma. They look at first like ordinary isti but under investigation one finds constant important links to maintain, intricate ones. A tough rite, it includes a sacrifice to the ancestors so it is the equivalent of going to Kasi or Gaya. It should be done at least once in one’s life.” He may or may not have known about procedures for folding all the rites into one or two days. The catur-masya preserve a number of intriguing, presumably ancient features, of which there is opportunity here for barest mention. The three of them, spaced every four months on full-moon days, are vaisva-deva, Varuna-praghasa, and saka-medha, respectively, initiating spring, the rainy sea son, and autumn. The vaisva-deva ritual at the outset of the New Year with Caitya full moon begins a long series of offerings in recognition of Vaisvanara (Agni) and Parjanya, god of rain. It involves the pleasant task of eating honey, and concludes next day with the normal offering to the full moon. The vaisva-deva rite occupies an important position in its own right, regard less of its role as first of the catur-masya. For ordinary householders it is a significant grhya (domestic) offering of cooked food to all the gods in a single ritual. Some see it as penance for acts of violence committed on a daily basis. It is a rite that Subbalaksmi did twice a day for most of her life. On the other hand, for Veda pandits and wives aspiring to a srauta career it may become the first step toward adhana, the setting of hearths for an agni-hotra career. In the latter case it is a full-blown isti with four rtvij and a duration of three days. Duvvuri Surya Prakasa Avadhani and Kanaka Durga took this step early in 2007 with Mitranarayana as adhvaryu and mentor. Both observed fasting with only hot milk and porridge at night. They anticipated adhana and agni-stoma
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in 2008 but in the end were unable to follow through. Kapilavayi Rama Sastri and Maruti did vaisva-deva in 2014 in anticipation of setting hearths in 2016. Rama Sastri compares vaisva-deva to the early childhood samskara, first feed ing of rice, anna-prasana. Cooked rice is the medium for the baby’s entry into a lifetime of eating anna every day. The ceremony of vaisva-deva is a preamble as well: yajamana and patni begin a pattern of daily offerings, one that should climax with soma.
To return to the catur-masya series, perhaps most magnetic of the three seasonal rites is the sharing of a barley meal offering to Varuna in hopes of evading his snares (pasa) and punishment for known or unknown sins. This second seasonal rite, Varuna-praghasa, involves five priests, adhvaryu, prati-prasthatr, hotr, agnidhra, and brahman. Small images of a ram and ewe are fashioned of barley flour paste and later sacrificed by the adhvaryu and prati-prasthatr, respectively. Abruptly, the prati-prasthatr asks the wife “How many lovers do you have?” and proclaims, having learned the names of each, that Varuna should snare them, evidently freeing the sacrificer from further cuckoldry. Other texts have the wife hold up the number of fingers or blades of grass that tally her amours. There is no hint that Varuna should punish the wife.
Much is made in commentarial literature about the cleansing effect of confession, sin being here removed not by punishment but rather by truth fulness. The inference that she indeed has lovers parallels the assumption that the sacrificer has enemies, sexual rivalry overlapping with ritual competi tion. Also fashioned of barley flour are tiny pots, one for each relative of the sacrificer plus an extra one for the unborn, containing gruel of course grains (karambha), all held in a winnowing fan (surpa) balanced on the head of the sacrificer or patni. Before offering into the daksina-agni both recite TS 1.8.3d. The patni unties the yoktra from her waist with TS 1.1.10g and together sacrifi cer and wife take a concluding bath.
There are numerous expressions from a cult of the dead in the catur-masya and one suspects that hesitation in performance of the full series may be reluctance to engage with Mrtyu. The catur-masya in the eighth segment of Apastamba’s sutras flow as a continuum, vaisva-deva (1–4), Varuna-praghasa (5–18), saka-medha (9–12), straight into pitr-yajna (13–16) ancestor offerings. In Varuna-praghasa there are offerings into the southern fire, use of the winnowing fan, “dismemberment” of two flour-paste animals in lieu of real ones, communion shares of offerings with relatives and invited Brahmans, and special offerings of karambha to Pusan, pathfinder for the dead, one known to prefer mushy food like porridge. The third seasonal rite is the saka-medha that concludes with pitr-yajna, sacrifice to the ancestors who
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dwell in their heavenly world, pitr-loka. Again relatives are fed, this time with a rice mess instead of barley, and balls (pinda) of cooked rice and barley are offered to the paternal trio of father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, then the further trio of ancestors, and finally the Visvedevas, “all gods,” served with rice that sticks to the offering hand. All of this occurs on a new screened-off altar with fire taken from the daksina-agni, mantras expressed soundlessly, sacred threads switched to left shoulders, circumambulations with left side toward the altar. The departed receive food, but with entirely different procedures.
Interesting to note are distinctions among those who do the catur-masya based on the sacrificial history of their pitr, ancestors. Those ancestors who performed no extended sacrifices after adhana are the agnisvatta fathers; those who performed only lesser sacrifices (agrayana, for example) are the barhisad fathers; while those who went on to the agni-stoma and offered soma are the somavant fathers. Thus in catur-masya performance Lanka, who had no ahitagni forbears, addressed a different aggregate of pitr from that to whom Baballa made offerings.
Subsequent to the trio of seasonal rites there is an offering to Tryambaka (Rudra) and then the suna-siriya ritual with offerings of milk to Vayu and purodasa for Indra Sunasiriya and Surya. A plow and various domestic ani mals are recommended as gifts to the priests. According to ApSS 8.7.5 and 11.7 a bull is given and cows should be sacrificed but of course this is not done today. Animal sacrifice with goats is one thing, cows are unthinkable. One of the two months designated for Varuna-praghasa is Sravana, the month when a goat sacrifice is required, the pasu-bandha that is independent of soma pressing. Interestingly, although flour-paste animals are “sacrificed” as part of the Varuna-praghasa no one suggests that such might be done with bovines as well.
To sum up the seasonal rituals, as in agrayana, prosperity in the form of bountiful harvests, milk, and wool appears to be the major focus, with strong attention to communication with the ancestors who are related to the seasons and indeed the full cycle of the year. Staying on the correct side of Varuna and other punishers such as the Maruts is an additional aim. Ganesh Thite makes the case that catur-masya have to do primarily with healing, seasonal changes signaling the arrival of various diseases.26 Jan Heesterman, on the other hand, sees the ritual series as “a victorious course through the universe both in respect to time (seasons) and . . . space (the three worlds), by which the sacrificer encompasses and becomes the whole of the universe.” In any case it appears that attention to ancestors is very much at the core of these seasonal rites.27
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