Other Rituals
Vedic ritual texts imagine an ideal progression through a number of sacri fices—extensive and quite expensive—after the agni-stoma. In the modern period there have been few ahitagni who managed more than the initial soma rite. A 1976 publication, Veda Pandits in India, volume 2, Andhra Veda Pandits, listed 401 names with photos, including numerous ahitagni, but largely with out record of srauta careers.45 A valuable 1983 survey by C. G. Kashikar and Asko Parpola is “Srauta traditions in recent times.”46 In the latter essay, the Krishna and East Godavari Districts together accounted for well over half (114) of the roughly 200 ahitagni listed historically for Andhra. It was at that time estimated that only 120 ahitagni in all of India and Nepal had performed two or more soma sacrifices, that is, agni-stoma plus any one of the other six varia tions in the list known as the sapta-samstha. Of these 120 more than half were Andhra pandits, and Konasima was well represented, although there being no available informant from the two Godavari districts not all were counted. In the three decades since that tally the Godavari sum has fallen while the Krishna number has risen markedly.
Of the Konasima (East Godavari) ahitagni featured in this current study, Duvvuri Yajulu, then age thirty-four, performed the sarva-prstha form of agni-cayana in 1949 and the vyudha form of paundarika in 1969, thereby receiv ing his full name, Duvvuri Yajnesvara Paundarika Yajulu. Baballa performed the aruna-ketuka in 1960. Mitranarayana was the sacrificer for agni-cayana, sararvato-mukh, and ati-ratra, all in the 1960s. At the age of fifty-four Bulusu Cayanulu performed his agni-cayana in 1969, the same year as Yajulu’s paundarika, and thereby received his name. All four completed from one to three sacrifices beyond agni-stoma. Lanka, Bulusu Kamesvara, and Pullela Laksminarayana did not go beyond the first soma rite.
There is one legendary regional history, however, and another that is accu mulating fame. The best known is Renducintala Yajulu, credited with com piling the most prolific srauta record in twentieth-century India and being a major stimulus for Konasima, the place of his birth. Among his twenty-some sacrifices were three paundarika, two vaja-peya, a sarvato-mukha, and seven courses of the catur-masya. His ritual history is a litany all the pandits can and do recite at every opportunity. He was a lifelong traveler, promoter of Veda and srauta, and pursuer of ever-more exotic rituals to be done with his own fires. After his passing an intriguing reflection was made by his wife, Laksmikanta, at her home in Vijayawada: “However playfully he may have felt about all those rituals connected with fire, I know they were as challenging to him as
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the taming of a tiger.” His descendants have now forged ahead with their own performances.
It is the Dendukuri family of Vijayawada that is racing to earn honors equal to those of the Renducintalas by completing, even reduplicating the schedule, vaja-peya, sarvato-mukha, aruna-ketuka, and all. It is the nature of Vedic rituals to build interlocking systems, rituals within rituals, with mantras and kriya
reappearing in different contexts. There is thus a tendency to solder together bits and pieces of a ritual life that sometimes appears as a Brahmanic counter part to winning a page in the Guinness Book of Records, a frequent hobby of
South Asians who grow the world’s longest fingernails or beards. There are several systems, by no means all in agreement, that classify fur ther the Vedic rituals under review here. One is by the number of soma-pressing days, one day being an ekaha rite such as the agni-stoma with three pressings on a single day. An ahina is the designation of a sacrifice with two to twelve pressing days, although twelve-day rituals are also known as dvadasaha. A sac rifice lasting a year or more is a sattra. For example, the maha-vrata described later is one day in the middle of a year-long sattra. A sacrifice of Prajapati goes to outer limits with a duration of a thousand years, at least according to Apastamba (ApSS 23.14.11).
The array of seven samstha mentioned in Chapter 2 is another classification well known but not in mandatory order for observance after the initial one, the agni-stoma. The six after agni-stoma include the vaja-peya, discussed later, as well as atyagni-stoma, ukhthya, sodasin, ati-ratra, and aptoryama. Apastamba briefly describes four soma sacrifices (ApSS 14.1–4) in which adjustments are made in the pattern of agni-stoma by the addition of stotra for an animal sac
rifice, distribution of soma cups, or in the case of the ati-ratra, the “overnight” sacrifice, by extending the ritual late into the night.
Yet a third ordering of rituals considers the material offerings themselves. One of course is soma while another is havir-yajna, a list of seven to match the seven soma sacrifices. These offerings are dairy products such as milk, ghee (butter), and curds, grains such as rice, barley, and millet, and animals (today the goat only, never the original bovines). Six of these rites have been covered earlier under adhana, agni-hotra, darsa-purna-masa, pasu-bandha, catur-masya,
and paka-yajna, the last simply being a category of “cooked” food such as rice or barley. Still to be portrayed is a seventh havir-yajna, the sautramani offering to Indra with the fermented beverage sura replaced today by milk.
After the paradigmatic agni-stoma it is perhaps the agni-cayana, known locally simply as cayana, that carries the most weight in coastal Andhra. Its variations, extending as long as forty days in the paundarika, will now be addressed.
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6.10 Variations of Agni-cayana,
Building a Fire Altar
Baballa was delighted to see that his tortoise—the foundation “sacrifice” for his aruna-ketuka recounted in Chapter 3—had escaped during the night through the carefully crafted exit hole. He could then carry freely the pan of embers that identified him with Agni and Prajapati, Fire and Lord of creation. His venture was the construction of an imagined altar for Agni fashioned of “water bricks,” ab-istaka. Duvvuri Yajulu also piled up sizable structures of a thousand actual clay bricks, 200 in each of five layers, and then twenty years later another with an additional thousand bricks. Both ahitagni knew they were returning to the beginning of Time with a compilation of all the visible and invisible parts of the universe. The water or clay bricks poured or laid down one by one with creative mantras by the sacrificer, the adhvaryu, and assistants are clouds, rivers, and grasses. They are bulls, asterisms, the new moon, full moon, rsi sages, meters. Some of them are breath, creation, “life” itself, “endless.” The coincidentia oppositorum of an altar of fire made of water recalls the birth of Agni himself in the cosmic waters.
At the heart of the edifice as it gradually rises are tangible items that reveal the deep histories of arresting symbols, naturally perforated stones (svayam-atrnna), for example, conical aerated turrets of marvelous castles built by termites (valnika), and “space-fillers” (loka-parna), all of them declarations of an interplay between the material and the immaterial, the world that is manifest and the realm of the transcendent. As Mircea Eliade observed, “life cannot be repaired, it can only be re-created by a return to sources.”47 And the building of the altar is not merely a reconstitution of Agni, Prajapati, the uni verse in all its space and time, and the sacrificer who is identified with all of them, but also a recovery of that which has never been revealed. It is some
thing like the astronomer peering into space to see the universe not as it is but as it was a hundred billion years ago.
The various forms of agni-cayana in today’s Taittiriya tradition of Andhra vary considerably from the well-known Nambudiri rite that occurred in Kerala in 1975. The most striking difference is the dramatic horde of sacrificed ani mals, all of them goats. It is not quite the Roman-circus-like zoological spec tacle of an asva-medha, but the array of bleating stand-ins for the horse, bull, ram, and others in the ancient version presents a bold contrast to the placid, soundless row of vegetable packets in Kerala.
Bricks assembled during the period of diksa for the yajamana and patni are carted to the construction site, a working crop field a with large trench excavated so that later the completed altar can be covered over and returned
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to production. The sacrificing couple may consult inherited copies of the Apastamba or Baudhayana Sulba Sutras48 with various ground plans for altars (citi) in order to choose a design for their platform. Authors of these sutras possessed a spirited knowledge of geometry, sagely fitting kiln-fired bricks into intricate patterns for each layer. Their artistry even takes a playful dimen
sion in the case of feathered wing tips for a soaring eagle or the outstretched legs of a tortoise who also appears to be flying to heaven! Mobility is again suggested in the ratha-cakra citi, chariot-wheel altar, either with spoked or solid wheels. In addition to the eagle that brings to mind the syena stealing soma from heaven in Rg Veda 4.26 and 27 (cf. TS 5.5.3.2), other birds can be constructed or the eagle may be stylized and built entirely of square bricks in a T-form with neither head nor tail. Others are in drona (soma cup or tub form), either circular or square, and still others are mandala, circular. Quite popular, however, is the soaring eagle, like the one sketched from memory by a Dendukuri grandson in Plan 6.2, the brahmacarin artist perhaps imagining his own srauta sacrifice in the future.
Construction demands a yardstick, supplied by a length of bamboo the height of the sacrificer with upraised arms. In addition to clay bricks of vary ing dimensions there are preparations of foundation soil. The adhvaryu plows the soil with one or more bullocks, waters it thoroughly, and sows seeds of sesame, rice, barley, wheat, legumes, and several wild plants. As well as the
Plan 6.2 Ground plan of a syena-citi, flying eagle altar for agni-cayana, drawn by Dendukuri Agnihotra Somayaji’s grandson, Vijayawada 2005.
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runaway tortoise two other reptiles are involved, a frog and a snake. A gold coin and a small gold human image (hiranya-purusa) are foundational, as are a naturally perforated stone, a divot of darbha grass, and a lotus leaf, all con sidered as “bricks” for the altar.
Pandits adhere to ApSS 16.1–17.26 in the first act of the standard agni-cayana, one that concerns the ukha fire-pot fashioned of clay, fired, cooled, filled with embers, and carried about by the sacrificer identified with this glowing heart of the altar under construction. It is symbolically bound (yoked) as are an ass, a horse that imprints with his right front hoof the major source of clay, and other featured elements of the sacrifice. The sacrificer visualizes, as he will throughout these proceedings, his ritual rival, that special person he hates.
The ukha is joined by a terra-cotta skull (substitute for the male Vaisya or Rajanya decapitated head in the ancient rite) and a termite turret contain ing, like a human head, seven holes. These two “heads” become the center of attention while verses are addressed to the Lord of the dead, Yama. They represent fore offerings, as signaled by the passage of fire around them, and there quickly follow the immolations of three goats impersonating the horse, bull, and ram of the ancient schedule, as well as two more that become the hornless goat and actual male goat (ApSS 16.7.1). Except for the clay dummy and the termite turret it is no longer the original festival of heads as there are no decapitations. Omenta are offered and purodasa loaves are baked on sherds and given to Agni Vaisvanara, “common to all men.” The drama of the ukha
fire-pan continues when the sacrificer raises it, takes the three Visnu strides that encompass the universe, enthrones it (just he did with soma stalks), then praises Agni who is kindled in it.
Once the initial foundation is constructed, four bricks initiate the new garha-patya hearth. Observers are instructed here with a significant point: bricks are not created until there is heard the resounding mantra that lays each in its place.49 Just as a goat is not killed by the Potter acting as samitr but rather by the mantra, so it is not the Potter who creates each brick but a mantra. When Duvvuri Yajulu performed his first cayana it rose to knee height (and in the telling of it he here recited TS.5.6.8.d and Apastamba). His second one came up to his waist. Those who build a third attain the height of the mouth. Since each performance adds a thousand bricks, succes
sive cayana are described by the number of sahasra, thousands. For example, Renducintala Yajulu performed several different paundarika forms of cayana, with a dvi-sahasra (2,000-brick) altar followed by tri-sahasra (3,000-brick) and catur-sahasra (4,000-brick) altars. Dendukuri Agnihotra performed his prathama or first sahasra in 1991, dvi-sahasra and tri-sahasra in 1994, all in Vijayawada.
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At the conclusion of the sacrifice the yajamana stands and praises the altar, something he has done periodically throughout. More than a gesture, it is his opportunity to reflect upon the meaning of his cosmogonic effort. In the end the massive array of repeated correspondences in the agni-cayana—sacri
ficer = Agni = Prajapati = the year = the three worlds—points beyond merely gaining heaven toward that decisive statement of the Upanisads, ya evam veda, “who knows this (set of correspondences)” gains release. And yet, as we dis
cover later in this chapter, he does not imagine moksa is his reward. Popular as well as scholarly attention was drawn to the agni-cayana with the publication in 1882 of five volumes of the fifty-volume series, The Sacred Books of the East, these five being Julius Eggeling’s translation of the Satapatha Brahmana with copious notes that remain incisive. Now, however, one turns first to Frits Staal’s monumental two-volume project, Agni: The Vedic Ritual of the Fire Altar (1983, reprint 2001) with the cooperation of more than two dozen scholars and Kerala Veda pandits. Excellent color plates and diagrams from the 1975 performance in Kerala, as well as the 1977 film “Altar of Fire” provide unparalleled resources for the study of a single ritual. One of the few defects of the book is the lack of documentation on the patni who is virtually unmentioned. Of some 108 photographs of participants, the sacrificer’s wife appears in only three, with head bowed under a parasol, suggesting she has no role.50
6.10.1 Paundarika
The most complex, demanding, even exhausting version of agni-cayana is the forty-day paundarika, considered the specialty of coastal Andhra, a rite featur ing garlands of white lotus flowers (paundarika). It is usually an ahina with a core of eleven soma-pressing days in its vyudha form, by contrast with a variant samudha form with twelve, thirteen, or more pressing days.51 There are prominent srautin who have performed both types. In all the scores of hours enjoyed in conversations with Duvvuri Yajulu the paundarika, one of his add-on names, remained his favorite topic. Large-scale preparation is nec essary, as well as financial solvency since the recommended priestly fee (of
course not observed today) is ten thousand cows (ApSS 22.24.8; KSS 23.1.9). The capsule biography of Kapilavayi Rama Sastra in Chapter 3 included a narration of his uneasiness before his first udgatr role in a paundarika. This was the first performance in the area of a 3,000-brick cayana in the vyudha form of paundarika. His anxiety softened after his deceased father appeared in a dream to offer pertinent advice. Some of his stress may have been that his older brother Venkatesvara was hotr, the adhvaryu was Renducintala Krishna,226 vedic voices
son of Renducintala Venkatacala Yajulu, and his own son, Agnihotra, was assuming his first rtvij role as prati-prasthatr among the seventeen priests. That particular paundarika began with twelve days of diksa and the sac rifice of a pure white goat for Vayu, the spotless goat having been procured in Hyderabad after a considerable search. He was first in the list of seven teen goats, the number belonging to Prajapati just as in the vaja-peya sacri fice. Days 13 to 25 scheduled an array of preliminary rites, including prayaja, fore-offerings involving Ida and other deities, the pravargya, and numerous libations of ghee. The centerpiece and fulcrum of the paundarika, as bricks were laid down in the manner described earlier, was eleven straight days of soma pressing, offering, and partaking along with goat sacrifices, one each day beginning on day 26 with the Agni-somiya goat. Ten of the goats were males, the sole exception being a nanny dedicated to the goddess Sarasvati on day 30. The last goat to be smothered was given over to Varuna on day 36 with its semen (virya, essence) extracted and offered as a homa into the ahavaniya. Day 37 was a break in the dissecting of pasus when a goat dedicated to Tvastr was set free after circumambulation with the fire-pan. The final sub stantial sequence was a condensed version of the sautramani with milk substi tuting as usual for sura and a sacrifice to Indra of three goats at a single post, two of them serving as stand-ins for the bull and ram in the sutras. This was an overnight (ati-ratra) soma-pressing schedule on days 38 and 39. The long and arduous sacrifice conclude on day 40 with an offering of hot milk ladled onto cold curds before the final bath.
6.10.2 Aruna-ketuka
A quite different form of agni-cayana is the “water-brick” aruna-ketuka men tioned earlier in this chapter and in Chapter 3. It was a family tradition main tained by Baballa in August 1960 with Lanka as adhvaryu. At the ripe age of fifty-seven he first did a twelve-day neighborhood begging tour, madhu-kara, as if still a brahmacarin beginning his Veda career. He and Sundari observed diksa for a full year before commencing. This imaginative cayana establishes an “altar” of water, each ladle poured into his right palm and then into a clay pot being placement by mantra of an ab-istaka, “water brick.” It is a perfect extension of the correspondences or connections (nidana, bandhu) that allow a brick to be a cloud, breath, or one of the meters.
TS 5.2.10.1–13 is the clue in establishment of the first layer of bricks for a standard cayana, with twenty apasya water bricks placed, five in each of in the cardinal directions. They are productive seed that brings offspring, cattle, and food. They also have prophylactic powers against demons and the dangers
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of unbridled fire. ApSS 16.28.4 follows suit by including rain water and river bricks (17.5.5; 7.1.1). The beauty of aruna-ketuka highlights the significance of water in all the sacrifices enumerated thus far, rituals that begin with the sprinkling of water, end with a bath in water, and entertain that essential ele
ment unobtrusively but frequently in the course of procedures. In the asva-medha, to take one example, the horse sniffs water, both king and horse (the royal alter-ego and victim-as-offering-to-the gods) are sprinkled with water, a four-eyed dog is trampled by the horse in water, and at the con clusion a leper stands in water as an “altar” for a final offering. As much as any element, water is ubiquitous and it is not surprising to find a crucial identity regarding this cosmic foundation for Agni. Waters, either celestial or terres trial, are described as the birthplace and home of Agni. In RV 10.51 Agni hides in the waters before he is discovered.
This primordial search for Agni therefore is replicated in the collection of different kinds of water to serve as bricks for aruna-ketuka. Baballa and Sundari saved water from rain that fell on a day with a bright, clear sun; from the nearby moving canal; from a standing pool; from the ocean (i.e., the Bay of Bengal); and last, the easiest source, from a learned Brahman’s house, mean
ing their own courtyard well. The bricks were laid in courses, mostly in groups of one to eleven at a time, with appropriate mantras for Agni, Indra, Surya, Visnu, and a host of other deities. The foundational tortoise (recalling Kurma as source of the cosmos, its frontal plate, body, and carapace representing the three levels of the universe), lotus leaf, and gold man and plate were done according to the standard agni-cayana. Kurma, having found the escape tun
nel, would live to plod along in the delta sun.
Attributed to the sage Aruna, the aruna-ketuka is one of a group of altar patterns ascribed to the Kathaka sakha. Five other altar constructions are listed by Apastamba (ApSS 19.11–15): savitra-cayana, according to Savitr or Surya, the sun; naciketa-cayana, ascribed to another sage, Naciketas; catur-hota-cayana, according to the RV formulas of the four hotr priests; vaisva-srja-cayana, the altar founded by universal creators; and finally an altar combining all of these styles. For his part Baudhayana (BSS 19.1–10) covers the same set of Kathaka altars, albeit with brahma-cit as the name of the one with multiple hotr. BSS 19.10 is the long segment followed by Baballa, one that concludes with the key statement that one who achieves aruna-ketuka reaches brahma-loka, the world of Brahma, and there is rewarded by being in the company of Brahma.
Charles Malamoud has noted that rites for these special kinds of fire altars are found in a segment of the Taittiriya Brahmana (10.1–10; 11.1–11; 12.1–9) with one exception, the aruna-ketuka, saved for the opening lines of the Aranyaka.
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His suggestion is that the fashioning of water bricks was such an enigma, a paradox, that its proper locus for study and transmission was the forest.52
6.10.3 Sarvato-mukha
While the eleven soma-pressing days and forty overall days of paundarika make it the most extensive altar construction temporally, another variation of agni-cayana expands both space and personnel. That is the sarvato-mukha, a fire platform “facing all directions,” four joined altars facing north, west, and south as well as east, the primary one of the cardinal directions. Such a prodi gious undertaking demands an astonishing seventy-two rtvij, a number that consumes all available Telugu Veda pandits and still requires importation of outsiders from Tamil Nadu and as far away as Varanasi.
It is understandable that the rite is a rarity given the facts of ritual rivalry and a fear of damage either intentional or accidental. When a number of out sider pandits failed to appear for a sarvato-mukha that Lanka observed, the sacrifice was changed at the last moment into a paundarika requiring only seventeen rtvij. Nevertheless, there is a boldness in continuing performance and sarvato-mukha has been accomplished more than half a dozen times by pandits mentioned in this study, including Mitranarayana, as discussed in his capsule biography in Chapter 3. Renducintala Venkatacalu Yajulu was first in the region and later his eldest son Renducintala Canandrasekhara Yajulu was another in 1980 while Dendukuri Agnihotra was a recent sarvato-mukha per
former in 1995.
6.11 The Vaja-peya Drink of Strength
The vaja-peya, “drink of strength,” summarized in brief in Chapter 2, is some times chosen in Andhra for a second soma sacrifice. Along with Agni, Prajapati is the ever-conscious role model for a sacrificer. Prajapati’s sacred number is the total or all-encompassing one of seventeen, one beyond the “complete” number sixteen, and it is not surprising therefore to find Apastamba declar ing “the vaja-peya is all about seventeen.”53 Seventeen sastra and seventeen stotra are heard, seventeen cups of pressed soma are drunk on the seventeenth day by seventeen priests, seventeen animals are sacrificed, and in addition to soma, seventeen cups of sura are imbibed by the priests. Sura, a distant cousin to Japanese saki, was brewed from rice, barley, and millet left to ferment in milk for three days. The opening diksa days and closing daksina are also sev enteen. The sacrificial pole (yupa) is seventeen arati in height. Seventeen bass
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drums are boomed to urge on horses drawing seventeen chariots on a race course measured at seventeen bow-shots to a goal post and back, a total dis tance that might be over two miles if the archer is given a decent bow.
The horse is celebrated for his strength (vaja), the first term in the name of the rite, and such power is acquired by the sacrifice. The horse-drawn war chariot figures obliquely when a wheel with seventeen spokes is set up with its hub on a short post. The wheel becomes a seat for the brahman priest when he does the “chant of the horses” commanding the steeds to win heaven while the adhvaryu revolves the wheel three times. All the horses had been bathed and made to approve rice cooked in milk by smelling it. And . . . they’re off! But no charioteer may round the turning post and return to the finish line before the sacrificer. The horses smell the rice again, drums are unbound, and immediately the sacrificer, having won an earthly victory, achieves heaven by climbing a ladder braced against the sacrificial pole. The ladder of course has seventeen rungs. Apastamba has him ascend alone after three exchanges of verses with his wife whereas some sutras authorize her partial ascent; halfway up the sacrificer announces “We have now become the children of Prajapati!” At the top he declares “We have now both become immortal!”
The cosmic symbolism of the race may be expressed in the circuit itself with a turning post (kastha, similar to the Roman circus meta) as well as the revolving chariot wheel-seat for the chanting brahman. Here Asko Parpola has supplied several cogent insights into the vaja-peya: the turning post could be construed as world pillar or axis mundi; one type of fire altar construction is the ratha-cakra, chariot wheel; and the divine horsemen twins, the Asvin, may be representatives of the routine chariot drives of the sun and the moon in day and night, respectively.54
Gold is featured many times, in gold chain necklaces for the priests, a piece on which the sacrificer places his right foot, and in daksina. The sixteen charioteers who completed the main event are given cups of sura (but not soma) and they join in the feast of meat from the sacrificed animals, includ
ing, in addition to the seventeen for Prajapati, a cow for the Maruts and a ram and ewe for Sarasvat and Sarasvati, respectively.
Thus the ancient program. Today’s vaja-peya is less spectacular, the wooden-wheeled bullock-drawn ratha (chariot) “race” is not about to challenge Ben Hur, and the sacrificer, his wife holding on to him, may keep one foot on earth while he “climbs” to heaven with the other. It is also less stimulat
ing as sura has become milk. Nevertheless, it is an authentic soma and pasu sacrifice (without cow or ram) with all the mantras and kriya and as many as thirty-two goats in a recent one. Lanka supervised several, including two in his home village of Nedunuru in 1975 and 1979. A charming photo of the former
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vaja-peya shows him in a wooden-wheeled ratha surmounted by a parasol. Mitranarayana was brahman singing the chant of the horses in the first one, udgatr in the other, and Bulusu Kamesvara also took priestly roles. Dendukuri Agnihotra performed vaja-peya, as his older brother, Candrasekhar, had done previously. Dendukuri Agnihotra commenced on Telugu New Year’s Day, Ugadi, March 20, 1996, only three months after he performed his gigantic sarvato-mukha.
Forty years earlier Hans van Buitenen filmed a vaja-peya with the last ahitagni in Pune who still maintained three fires, Sri Bapat, who followed Hiranyakesi Srauta Sutra. A number of Sukla Yajurvedins were attendants but not participants and a crowd estimated at 25,000 observed. The first day took place in the agni-hotra room, the second on the prag-vamsa, third on the maha-vedi, the space being a sports field of S. P. College. The soma was pressed and drunk, a goat was tied to the sacrificial pole but never sacrificed. Again the Andhra pandits, when told of this event, considered it an inappropriate and incomplete yajna if no animal was offered and shared. As in ancient versions, a modern sacrificer concludes with a verse addressed to Brhaspati, the god who aided him in winning the chariot race.55
6.12 The Maha-vrata Great Vow and
Go-sava Bull Imitation
The great majority of rituals covered in this chapter are solemn affairs, every one striving to avoid errors, the alert brahman paying as close attention as possible to every syllable and action, the adhvaryu and crew moving rapidly from point to point, outside onlookers observing restraint. Joy, exuberance, vivacity are not common expressions, with the possible exception of pleasure during an agrayana. At its height, however, one ritual evokes a festive response with musical instruments, singing, dance, and transgressive performance arts. That occasion is the maha-vrata, “great vow,” in the middle of a sacrificial session (sattra) known as the gavam-ayana, “path of the cows.” According to the sutras the one-day festival is preceded and succeeded by 180 days of the sattra in which priests take multiple roles in pressing soma, offering a goat to Prajapati (or Surya), and building the fire altar. Shorter versions of sattra from a fortnight to forty-nine days are possible, and of course the other extreme is also presented, including a sattra lasting a hundred years.56
The maha-vrata is the keystone of the sattra described in ApSS 21.15–25. No Konasima pandit living today has performed it but some have participated in one by invitation. Each priest has a place and functions often unique in his
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experience. The adhvaryu sits on a wooden bench, the udgatr on a high chair of udumbara wood, and the hotr on a swing-seat suspended like a glider from a cross bar, a type of seat seen in affluent Andhra homes today. An accom plished person using a bamboo pluck plays an extraordinary vina, a lute with ten holes, each with ten munja strings. Wives sit on distributed grasses and occasionally sing, play flutes, or blow on conches, while girls sing and perform dances that one might imagine to be ancient precursors of classical Kuchipudi. Four “earth drums” are constructed of hides drawn over pits in the ground. They have the wonderfully onomatopoeic name bhumi-dundubhi. Chariots roll onto the maha-vedi and archers shoot arrows into rawhide targets. Martial arts in ritualized combat take place, similar to nocturnal street pageants among non-Brahmans today, although the Vedic version features a match between Sudras and Brahmans under showers of abusive phrases not otherwise heard. In other words, it is a celebratory occasion for transgressive release.
Erotic display is not omitted. Behind a screen on the maha-vedi a man “from Magadha” has intercourse with one prostitute (pumscali) while a Vedic student under a vow of celibacy engages in a ribald dialogue, reminiscent of asva-medha exchanges, with another. Some sutras are far more explicit here than Apastamba. The maha-vrata has elicited response from pandits as well as scholarly commentators, the former back-pedalling away from what they see as licentious elements, the latter pointing to those same aspects as well known in the history of religions for promoting fecundity in earth, animals, and humans. Many have seen swinging and a tug of war over a rawhide fac simile of the sun as annual solar rituals. Asko Parpola’s suggestive analysis, uncovering deeper layers of the pre-classical Vedic religion, sees the goddess Vac (=Durga) as the central deity in the maha-vrata and he understands the bhumi-dundubhi as war drums in keeping with the archers, ritualized combat, and fiercer aspects of the goddess.57
Long ago Renducintala Yajulu performed a maha-vrata in Gungalakurru, on the canal just south of Nedunuru, employing a vesya (Telugu: prostitute) and a Brahman bachelor in lieu of a brahmacarin for the sexual act, and Dendukuri Agnihotra has more recently added the rite to his impressive resume. Duvvuri Yajulu, performer of a paundarika in 1969, knew that the maha-vrata, with requisite prostitute, was to be performed on the next-to-last day. “A couple was available in Guntur,” he said, Guntur being “Magadha,” far away where things are done improperly, “but I did not seek them. No one would watch them perform, so who could verify that ‘it’ was actually done! So with darbha grass we made a male and a female doll (bomma) and threw them both up on the platform out of sight!” On another occasion he suggested that “it” might have
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entered the ritual to remind the sacrificer and wife, celibate for forty days in a paundarika, how “it” is done!
There appears to be no limit to Vedic ritualists’ imagination regard ing the voluptuous interplay of human, animal, and plant kingdoms, what Dylan Thomas called “the force through which the green fuse drives the flower.” In a later segment of this chapter the asva-medha is explored, an extensive rite in which the king-sacrificer is homologized to a living stallion, both remaining celibate for one year. The queen ritually accepts into her body the pent-up sexual forces of productivity from the sacrificed horse-king. In another ritual, the go-sava, the sacrificer, not a royal one, is homologized to a bull, and in direct opposition to the king-horse, enjoys the freedom to mount anything that moves. In fact, this libertarian venture grants license to incest, transgression of a nearly universal taboo. Behaving bull-like, for one year the sacrificer should mount his own mother, sister, and (directly countering marriage rules) a woman from his own gotra. Also bull-like, he should be free to urinate and defecate anywhere and anytime he chooses.
Apastamba (ApSS 22.12.17–20; 13.1–3) and Baudhayana (BSS 18.7) rely on TB 2.7.6.1–3 but come up with quite different details on this one-pressing-day ukthya type of soma sacrifice that admits the sacrificer to svarga, heaven, and requires a daksina of 10,000 cows. Baudhayana omits transgressive acts and any mention of bulls or cows other than the daksina. There is understand
able reluctance on the part of pandits following Apastamba to discuss what is seen as outrageous behavior. Age-old musings on human-bovine rapport carry no weight. Outside the Taittiriya sakha, however, there is one amus ing tale to inject a note of levity. The Jaiminiya Brahmana (JB 1.113) includes the experience of an old man who performed the go-sava, in the course of which, in a crowd of people, he lost control of his bladder. This comes naturally to bulls so he pronounced the go-sava to be properly an old man’s ritual, a sthavira yajna. Perhaps the narrative also defuses sexual transgres sions (with troubling echoes of the sins of Prajapati with his daughter and Yama with his sister) as no more than the empty gestures of an old bull put out to pasture.58
6.13 The Sautramani Offering to Indra the Protector
An addendum to the now discontinued raja-suya, or the vaja-peya or the agni-cayana, including the paundarika, is a four-day soma, sura, and animal [[233]] sacrifice known as the sautramani, addressed to Indra Sutraman, the king of the gods as protector. Actually, the deities are threefold and a ram was once sacrificed to Sarasvati and a goat for the Asvin twins along with a bull to Indra. Today the offerings are all goats, a female going to the goddess. Sarasvati and the divine twins are known for their healing powers and the trio figures in the origin myth of the rite. More than any other god, Indra is famed as soma-pa, drinker of soma. He had an early start as is mother served him the sacred juice as a newborn baby (RV 3.48.2–3). But at one time an over-indulged Indra had what could be described as a bad trip: he came com pletely undone and lost his vital powers, including the splendor and fiery energy that enabled him to rise above all other gods. The curative ritual, offerings to Indra of more soma, sounds like a “hair of the dog that bit you” remedy. It worked, apparently due to sura, Indra became his powerful self again, and the sautramani has been recommended ever after for Brahmans unable to hold their soma. Apastamba and other sutra writers repeatedly address this matter of the sacrificer or priest who vomits soma and is in need of special attention.59
There are two versions of the rite and coastal Andhrans follow that of Kakali rather than Caraka. The sura fermented grain concoction of the vaja-peya appears again in the sautramani with special cups for the deities in addition to soma cups. Eagle feathers are involved, perhaps a reminder of the eagle that first brought soma from heaven. A wilder sura recipe occurs in the Caraka version where the hairs of a lion, leopard, and wolf are placed in the deities’ cups. A way to avoid these dangerous predators, however, is simply for the sacrificer and two priests to visualize them. Kane has an observation here: “The prowess, impetuosity, and fury found in those wild beasts” is the symbolic point.
Once again in today’s performance the sacrificer and priests drink milk as substitute although a goat-hair sieve is employed as if this “sura” required purification by straining in the fashion of soma production. The sacrificer offers a sura cup to Indra while the adhvaryu and prati-prasthatr present cups to the Asvins and Sarasvati, respectively. (The prati-prasthatr for this sautra
mani, incidentally, was Kapilavayi Rama Sastri’s son, Agnihotra, enjoying his first rtvij role). After the initial omenta are removed, the three animals are dis sected, cooked, and offered with purodasa. The hoof and vestigial “hoof” of one goat are covered with fat scooped from the surface of the cooking water and offered into the ahavaniya, all the sura cups are dumped in the water meant for the concluding bath of sacrificer and wife, daksina are distributed, and the sautramani is concluded.60 [[234]]
6.14 The Asva-medha, Sacrifice of the Royal Horse, the Purusa-medha, and the Raja-suya
Of all the Vedic rituals surveyed here it is perhaps only the agni-cayana that has drawn as much attention from scholars outside of India as the horse sacrifice. This is due in part to the huge spectacle of the year-long rite with its cast of many hundreds, an Indic Noah’s ark collection of wild and domes
tic animals (as many as 636 in one account), and the cachet of a handsome stallion wandering free to seek new pastures and conquer new territory for the king in the bargain. Mostly, however, its notoriety west of India is gained from apparent Indo-European roots and knowledge of counterparts in the Roman October horse, ancient Scandinavian myths and rites, and Celtic and Greek mare sacrifices. Jaan Puhvel notes that the asva-medha represents “the sum of Ancient Indic pageantry” and Wendy Doniger, an ardent lover of horses, observes in the introduction to her translations of Rg Vedic hymns about the asva-medha (1.162 and 163): the horse is three things at once, a material creature, a race horse, and “a precious sacrificial victim.”61
As noted previously, the asva-medha is the favorite ritual of Kapilavayi Rama Sastra although he knows he can never see or participate in one, the last performance being some three centuries ago. Its mantras and kriya, how ever, are alive in his imagination. And most pandits are familiar—although it is not in the Taittiriya syllabus—with the wondrous opening lines of the Brhadaranyaka Upansad in which all parts of the sacrificial horse are linked to cosmic space and time, even his neigh being speech. Sanskrit epics and Puranas occasion numerous performances of the horse sacrifice and Chapter 1 noted that several rulers of Andhra dynasties celebrated asva-medha to mark successful wars, expanded kingdoms, and their new roles as cakra-vartin, uni
versal sovereigns. One of the last recorded performances was that of the raja of Amber, Savai Jayasing, early in the eighteenth century ce. Rama Sastra’s acquaintance with the horse sacrifice began in his first two years of sitting with his father to hear mantras from kanda 3 and 4 of the Taittiriya Samhita. These mantras about the sacred horse were put in per spective when he later came to the Taittiriya brahmana portion. Finally, when he neared the end of his brahmacarin years, he learned the full program of the drama in ApSS 20.1–23. Other than BAU 1.1 he is not acquainted with the Vajasaneyi mantras and the Satapatha Brahmana version that have been major sources for many scholars.
In his mind’s eyes and ears Rama Sastra sees and hears the scenes develop from the selection of an outstanding stallion, often white but not necessar ily so, to the king whispering to the horse’s right ear the appellations of a
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champion, then on to the release of the royal horse for a year of wandering in the company of a hundred warriors, perhaps even 400 including 300 chari oteers. Although the king remains at home he turns over rulership to the adh varyu who is acknowledged as putative king as well as executive priest making daily ghee libations into a footprint of the absent horse. The sacrificer-king lis tens as the hotr recites and lute players accompany singers recounting famous exploits by kings past and present. These evening narrations will continue for a full year of pari-plava cycles changing every ten days. After almost a year the horse is guided home to his stable, provided that no defending army has killed or captured him.
Soma pressings and various animal sacrifices accompany the building of the maha-vedi, great altar. The four major priests symbolically receive not only the four quarters of space but also the four queens in hierarchical order, the chief queen (mahisi) going to the supervising brahman, the favorite (vavata) to the hotr, the displaced one (parivrkti) to the udgatr, and the message-bearer wife (palagali) to the adhvaryu. The wives of the gods are addressed and a host of the adhvaryu assistants distribute food to gathered observers throughout the night.
The second of three pressing days is the main event. The victorious horse and two other animals are dedicated to Prajapati. A hornless goat is to go as pathfinder-announcer to the gods, as in RV 1.162.4, and a gayal (gomrga, bos frontalis) is given a role in special offerings. Then a vast crowd of other animals is driven or carted in for dedication to a variety of deities, some creatures tied to different parts of the starring horse that is bound to the central sacrificial pole. In a single row ten poles flank each side of the median post and animals are bound to each. TS 5.6.11–20 enumerates 180 animals tied to these twenty flanking poles. Captive wild animals, including a boar and various birds, are stationed between thee poles as scores of goats of every description bleat anx iously in the midst of all the unruly creatures straining at cords on the dusty, dung-strewn arena of sacrifice.
Three of the wives, each with a hundred female assistants, come forward according to rank to wash the horse and string gold, silver, or pearl beads into his mane, tail, and other hairy parts and smear him with ghee. The adhvaryu hitches the stallion with flanking horses to the royal chariot, the king-sacrificer equips himself with armor and bow and mounts it while expressing reverence to his ancestors and respect to the horses, chariot, and charioteer. The horse sniffs water and is released, then drinks water. The agnidhra brings Agni in a pan, circles first the horse, then all the wild creatures so the latter can be freed along with four selected mares and goats. The arena becomes markedly calmer with only domestic victims still bound.236 vedic voices
The climax of the ritual year comes with the immolation of the stallion, hornless goat, and gayal, all by asphyxiation, the horse smothered with a blan ket, the other two strangled by cords. The prastotr sings a saman for the ears of Yama and the prati-prasthatr brings the queens to the dying horse to circle him nine times while fanning him, moving clockwise or counterclockwise with their hair braided or flowing loose, slapping right or left thighs, chang ing these gestures as they alternate directions. As the lesser queens sit close by, the chief queen lies down and entwines her legs with the stallion as the adhvaryu guides the massive penis against her vagina. It is a graphic evoca tion of channeling the pent-up sexual powers of the king-horse toward the sought-for birth of a new king. Although the horse wandered freely, care was taken to prevent mares from attracting his attention, and simultaneously the king observed chastity for that year while sleeping in the arms of his favorite wife. Erotic forces are also aroused by juicy exchanges between priests and the king’s wives who were earlier granted to them, dialogues of a sort that would never occur in life outside the protective canopy of consecrated ritual space and time.62
The three queens, again according to rank, stitch the horse with gold, sil ver, and copper or lead needles to mark butchering lines, then do the same on the hornless goat and gomrga before the extraction of omenta. It is said that a horse has no vapa (omentum) so a layer of belly fat is stripped in its place. The king-sacrificer cuts off the right ear of the horse, the one into which he earlier whispered eulogies. Omenta are cooked and apportioned as the many victims are dismembered, the blood and right front hoof of the horse being set aside for cooking and then svistakrt sacrifice into the throat of the gayal. The king-sacrificer ascends his throne to sit on a lion or tiger skin where he is sprinkled repeatedly with water as the Purusa sukta is recited.
Then comes a striking ritual that has the ring of ancient Central Asian horse sacrifices, perhaps even Paleolithic ancestry. The adhvaryu takes the dis membered parts of the three chief victims and assembles them on the ground as if they were alive, the head of the pathfinder goat facing west, the other two heads facing east. All are then gathered up and offered into the ahavaniya. The adhvaryu makes three additional offerings into the gayal’s throat, on the right front hoof of the horse, and into an iron bowl. Animal sacrifices continue, as they have throughout the ritual.
The asva-medha opened with a curious ritual involving a “four-eyed” dog. It now closes with an equally odd offering on to the bald head of a buck-toothed, yellow-eyed leper from the lineage of Atri. Both rites involve pools of water, the featured horse made to trample the dog in water, the leper made to stand in water. Throughout the ritual water has sprinkled both horse and king and
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again water is the medium for the concluding bath for the king-sacrificer and presumably one or more of his queens.63
Konasima pandits are as uncomfortable parsing the purusa-medha, human sacrifice, as were some ancient commentators. Apastamba pro vides only seventeen phrases immediately following the horse sacrifice. Accounts closely follow the asva-medha schedule, including an extraor dinary number of human victims and selection of a primary man who, like the stallion, is granted a year of privileges while remaining chaste until his asphyxiation and copulation with the chief queen. There is no inscriptional or other record that a purusa-medha was ever performed, leading some scholars to suggest it was simply invented to round out sacrificial possibilities. And yet there it is in the list of requisite sacri fices. The Vajasaneyi Samhita—Satapatha Brahmana—Katyayana Srauta Sutra sequence of White Yajur Veda texts contains the most details, 184 human victims in the SB account, 158 in KSS, all of them bound to sac rificial posts, then circumambulated by fire. Parallel to the asva-medha a host of wild animals is released. The significance of the entire enterprise is compromised when SB 13.6.2 presents a deus ex machina, an ethe real voice that intervenes to halt the proceedings: a sacrificer always eats the victim, man would therefore eat man, not an acceptable act, ergo, no performance.64
The raja-suya, consecration of a king, died out like the asva-medha. Although of considerable interest to scholars it draws scant attention from the pandits and will be passed with brief mention here. It is treated in the Taittiriya corpus including ApSS 18.8–25.22. Featured in addition to soma
pressing and drinking are several king-as-warrior pursuits, a chariot drive, the king shooting arrows from his bow, and a brief cattle “raid.” There is a recita tion of the tale of Sunahsepa, the boy who was nearly sacrificed to Varuna on behalf of the sonless king Hariscandra. Also included is a game of throwing dice by which the king is reborn and enthroned and the cosmos is regener ated. In his thorough monograph on the raja-suya Jan Heesterman concluded by noting that the presiding deity of the ritual is the king, identified with the cosmos and its processes.65
6.15 Final Absorption into Agni:
Funeral Rites
In the Harappan civilization of the third and second millennia bce, successive funeral traditions included burial in the ground, then cremation, and then urn burials of the ashes from cremation. So too the Rg Veda included hymns for
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ritual burials as well as cremations. Ultimately, however, Agni prevailed for normative funerals. Henceforth it was Agni Kravyad, eater of flesh, who was invoked rather than Bhumi, the gracious and mothering earth goddess who still today safeguards the departed in many non-Brahman communities.
Virtually every human has the desire to live a long life, postpone death, and hear about concepts of fate and an afterlife hallowed by long tradition. Such yearning has been resonant throughout this chapter, every ritual reflecting some aspect of personal end time. The recruitment of ancestors in proceed
ings is also essential since they form a community everyone will someday join. A review of the rituals in the order described here may be instructive. When Agni is established in his fivefold and threefold representations the daksina southern fire is in the quarter of death and attention to ancestors and its embers will be employed in pitr-yajna, offerings to the Fathers. The twice-daily sandhya-vamdana is a moment for a brahmacarin or an ahitagni to declare his place in an ancestral lineage. For the ahitagni it is accompanied by an evening or morning agni-hotra that includes mantras recognizing these Fathers now in the company of the Vasus, Rudras, and Adityas, the celestial generations to which pitr-yajna go, along with the more remote and general ized ancestors with the Visvedevas, All-gods.
The lunar isti include some of the same mantras and by long tradition new-moon day, more than full-moon day, is a special occasion for providing satisfaction to ancestors. As for the agrayana, the perpetuation of nutritive life is celebrated in the first-fruit offerings of new rice, barley, and millet. Some families also offer seeds of bamboo, vamsa, a word that means lineage as well, the tall measured stalk expressing a line of descent. The seasonal offerings, the third (saka-medhas) in particular, involve the surpa winnowing fan, a funereal emblem, offerings into the southern fire, discreet offerings to Pusan, path finder to the other world, and a link into pitr-yajna. It was suggested earlier that one reason for laxity in performance of the threefold catur-masya could in fact be such preoccupation with Mrtyu, lord of the dead, the maxim “let sleep
ing dogs lie” coming to mind.
In addition to fashioning three maha-vira “great hero” or “large man” pots for the remarkably iconic pravargya ritual, a human effigy is created complete with symbolic body parts. Ritual implements are placed, as if predictive of what will happen later in last rites: first comes adornment of the deceased’s body with all the paraphernalia of ritual life and then a temporary transitional body is fashioned for the preta, transient spirit of the deceased.
Turning to the first soma sacrifice, the requisite diksa is a symbolic death and rebirth for both sacrificer and wife. The agni-stoma will include as well an actual victim, the goat, going to the gods as a “living” gift. His omentum (vapa)
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representing the immortality of the sacrificer will be the first offering to the deities before it is cooked and shared in what amounts to the goat’s funerary banquet. The Sravana-pasu independent goat sacrifice is also a real rite of pas sage, again involving identification of the sacrificer with that animal closest to a human, now transported from this world to the other.
As for the additional soma sacrifices, the construction of the fire altar in agni-cayana or any of its variations is predictive of funeral observances for an ahitagni or his wife, whoever dies first. The smasana citi or losta citi is the con struction of an altar on the site of the funeral pyre that consumed all the ritual implements employed by the couple throughout years of agni-hotra and other sacrifices. In smaller compass it is a recapitulation of cayana. With successful conclusion of the vaja-peya “drink of strength” sacrifice it may be recalled that the sacrificer and wife symbolically climb a ladder to svarga, heaven or the sun, as he proclaims: “We have now both become immortal!”
The maha-vrata, despite episodes of merriment and the arousing of pow ers of fertility, also has animal sacrifices. In the full course of a sattra goats are everywhere stand-ins for the bulls, cows, calves, and ewes specified in the sutras. And finally, to complete this review of rituals in this chapter, the sautra mani that parallels the independent goat sacrifice and includes such immola tion, contains an offering of “sura” (i.e., milk) onto a termite mound with its folkloric connections to the other world, and ends with sacrifice to the ances tors. A rite intending to fortify the body of a one who cannot tolerate soma, the sautrmani concerns a sacrificer who could be denied the attainment of heaven without benefit of the sacred beverage.
Apart from all these details in the full array of rituals, there are spe cial sutras known as pitr-medha that cover funerals for ahitagni (as well as single-fire sacrificers and those who have not set fires). Just as manuals for the final samskara, antyesti, are written by hand or published separately from other life-cycle rites, so the touchy subject of ancestors, meaning the dead, is covered by texts uncoupled from both srauta and grhya sutras.66 They are largely unknown to Brahmans except for the special class of Apara Brahmans and ahitagni who must consult books to perform last rites for one of their own tiny circle.
Chapter 3 noted the deaths of numerous ahitagni and patni, and some funeral procedures for Baballa, Cayanulu, and Surya were detailed. Three significant features were mentioned there and these require further elabora tion. First is the fact that an ahitagni, alone among all Hindus, does not die until the beginning of the special funeral Taittiriyins know as brahma-medha. A second matter pertains to a soma sacrificer, and therefore drinker, who must receive punar-dahana, a re-cremation of pulverized bones and teeth in
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order to eliminate all traces of the sacred substance, and this rule extends to his co-sacrificer wife. And third, an ahitagni who has performed any type of agni-cayana fire-altar building is entitled to the rite of losta-citi (or losta-cayana), construction of an altar of mud or sod bricks on the spot of the cremation pyre. Perhaps the best way to illustrate these different funerary procedures is to relate events in a single agrahara.
Samavedam lived most of his life in the Sriramapuram agrahara as a suc cessful Veda pandit, one who did not choose to establish sacrificial fires and perform agni-hotra. After his abrupt departure from this life he was soon shaved, washed, and garlanded at home and carried to the burning mound just fifty yards from the hamlet, a site never referred to as smasana but simply “there” or “that place.” Although a short journey, the bamboo bier was set on the ground for the requisite three stops, each for three circumambulations by mourners before reaching a prepared pyre. The wood was ignited by embers from the Samavedam household’s aupasana fire. An Apara Brahman, a priest who specializes in obsequies for Brahmans, came from Amalapuram to super
vise the ceremonies. Venkatarama Ghanapathi and Bhaskara Ghanapathi, Samavedam’s two Veda pandit sons, participated and were then tasked with the masika, monthly observances, including astaka, offerings on “the eighth” day of the new moon, continued on the following day, as well as the anniver
sary ritual (Telugu abdika) occurring a year later.
Samavedam’s next-door neighbors, however, included three ahitagni, Baballa, Cayanulu, and Duvvuri Yajulu, whose respective funerals required the extended procedures of Taittiriya tradition. Akondi Suryanarayana, the same Apara Brahman, attended but could not direct; other ahitagni took over, consulting books with special mantras and kriya for which Akondi was not qualified. These three ahitagni required different procedures. Baballa was stretched out on blocks of ice placed in his agni-hotra room, awaiting the arrival from Pune of his student Ramam (Chirravuri Srirama Sarma) to assist in the ceremonies at Baballa’s request. In their guru-sisya relationship Ramam was a surrogate son, Baballa’s own disabled son a dying cancer patient at this point. Cayanulu was laid face up across the vedi between his hearths as if he were one more implement in sacrifice. And indeed his body was the sacrifice, antyesti, the last isti to be performed before the clay hearths were scraped away.
In both situations there was no death until the brahma-medha started. Twice each day their bodies were washed, as if they were still bathing, and fires were aroused, as if they were still doing agni-hotra evening and morn ing. Colleagues did mantras and kriya, including isti and prayascitta expia tions. The breathless bodies lying so close to the fires seemed to be cooking, slowly melding with Agni, interiorizing him even before final absorption on
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the cremation pyre. The significance of an ahitagni, about to travel, mystically drawing the fires up into his body for safekeeping, is realized: a journey to the other world is imminent.
On the third day the bodies of Baballa and Cayanulu were carried to the same smasana mound used years later for Samavedam, their processions to respective pyres leaving about 8 am for rituals lasting almost until sundown. Mourners carried three terra-cotta pots on slings labeled “a,” “d,” and “g,” one for each of the three fires brought from the agni-hotra rooms. A fourth pot behind carried coals from the aupasana fire to be maintained separately. Ritual implements brought from the agni-hotra room were smeared with ghee and placed on each body after it was laid across the wood, the havani ladle for agni-hotra on the mouth, upabhrt ladle in the left hand, wooden knife (sphya) under the back, winnowing baskets (surpa) at the sides, wooden yoke-pin (samya) on the genitals, metal pots for agni-hotra milk and ghee at the feet.
Embers from the ahavaniya ignited straw at the head, daksina-agni and garha-patya igniting torso and right thigh, respectively. Only the arani fire-churning woods, the juhu ladle, and ukhala and musala mortar and pestle were withheld from the flames, these five to be used for secondary cremation. The microcosmic layout of the body—head, torso, feet—is recognized in the ritual as the body is returned via Agni to Purusa-Prajapati, the macrocosm embracing heaven, midspace, and earth.
Women are sometimes gatherers of charred bone and tooth fragments a day or two later, dropping them one at a time into a pot without looking at it. This important task is succeeded by the rite of punar-dahana, re-burning of these fragments after they have been ground into chalky powder in the mortar and pestle, then stirred with ghee into a paste. The juhu ladle serves to offer the mixture, including the last traces of twice-burned soma, into a separate fire maintained with embers from the initial cremation.
After brahma-medha and re-cremation the procedures for Baballa and Cayanulu differed only slightly in mantra and kriya. As performers of two different versions of agni-cayana both were entitled to losta-citi, the stacking of small sod or earth (losta) blocks in layers to commemorate their fire-altar building. The blocks are called bricks (istaka) even though unfired, and at times small stones may suffice. Baballa had performed aruna-ketuka with water bricks while Cayanulu (as his honorary name reveals) had done cayana in a more conventional style nine years later. After thorough sweeping and washing, the spot of cremation became the site of the memorial citi, one that in both cases soon crumbled and disappeared in the rainy season. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
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With the losses of Baballa and Cayanulu, Sundari Somidevamma and Subbalaksmi Somidevamma were left as white-covered widows confined to their houses. Duvvuri Yajul’s wife Surya Somidevamma, on the other hand, died suddenly nine years before him and her last rites had to meet three requirements not faced by the other somi-devamma. First, because Surya’s death left Yajulu alive the musi-vayanam ritual had to be performed for the auspicious wife who dies first. A brahma-muttaiduva Brahman funerary priestess was brought from Amalapuram to locate Surya’s spirit and send it to Gauri-loka, the heaven of goddess Gauri. Ten flower-adorned women attended this female-directed ritual by the canal close to Sriramapuram and each received Surya’s blessing in the form of prasada to take home. This is the ritual that was done for Cayanulu’s first wife, Rama Suryakanta, when she died of typhoid fever in 1945. Second, their ritual utensils, excepting implements for re-cremation, were burned on Surya’s pyre with embers from their agni-hotra fires. The Duvvuri hearths then were permanently cold when Yajulu returned home. And third, the punar-dahana re-burning was necessary for Surya, just as it was for Baballa and Cayanulu.
Over in Vyaghresvaram a similar situation unfolded in the same year with the death of Kamesvari Somidevamma, wife of Laksminarayana, leaving another ahitagni a widower two years before his own passing. It was necessary to reserve a portion of her cremation fire, grind bone fragments, re-burn, and offer the ashes with the proper mantras because, like Surya, her body con
tained soma. This raises a question: neither Surya nor Kamesvari ever drank soma from a graha cup in soma-bhaksana, soma drinking in a sacrifice. How then did their bones accumulate soma?67 To explain, some background in the long history of funeral traditions is necessary.
Significant agrarian symbols, along with pastoral ones, are expressed in last rites from the earliest Vedas. The bone-collection rite (asthi-samcayana) still today follows standard cremation. Requests to Agni to permit the deceased to join a new body are accompanied by the sprinkling of water on bone fragments in Rg Veda 10.16.5–6 (cf. AVS 18.2.10; KausS 82.28), suggest
ing regeneration of life. It is possible that sesa in verse 5 may be the “remnant” soma the poet declares in verse 6 to be “in” brahmana such as the deceased. The practice of plowing, seeding, and watering furrows (karsu) on or next to the cremation mound, then “planting” bones in these beds, is known from TS 5.2.5.2–5 (cf. SB 13.8.2.1–3) and this appears to be the intention of a dif
ferent version of losta-citi which bypasses re-cremation in favor of burial of the entire bone pot. Further, there may be a direct homology between three soma-pressing days and a vague three-day journey of the deceased expressed in RV 10.14.16.68
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There are several possible solutions to the puzzle of the soma-retaining wife who did not drink it. Stressed throughout this book is the fact that the ahitagni and patni pair is a co-sacrificing unit. Although of different ages at birth, in the diksa for agni-stoma and every subsequent soma rite they are symbolically born again at the same moment, bound together by this transformation. A second consideration is the belief of some that a bride takes her husband’s blood at marriage.69 Is blood exchange a possible avenue for soma to journey from the body of the ahitagni to the body of the patni? Soma drinking took place, how
ever, some decades after the marriage qualification and only soma inherited by a previous generation of sacrificers would be relevant. If the musi-vayanam ritual performed for Surya and Kamesvari returned the two deceased wives to their bridal moments, pre-pubescent girls with natal family blood, they both would have been soma-free.
Perhaps the question is too esoteric to consider further but there is another explanation that satisfies more than one somi-devamma family. A wife eats the leftovers of her husband’s food and over the course of many years soma is transferred into her bones. In the case of Surya, a marriage of fifty-one years after agni-stoma meant a considerable period of soma accumulation.
6.16 Becoming an Ancestor
Ancestors are everywhere. It is not only the rsi sages who hover within the river mists of Konasima. Past generations are still present requesting recogni tion and offerings in rituals that keep their names and accomplishments in mind. American college students, from evidence in classroom questioning, seldom supply the full name of a single one of their eight great-grandparents. Ahitagni may provide five to ten generations of names. Connections are rein forced by daily worship (pitr-tarpana), the new-moon-day offerings of water and rice balls (pinda-dana), and many other rites intended to give satisfaction (trpti) to the Fathers residing, ever watchfully, in pitr-loka. An important sym biosis is operative here: ancestors survive on human offerings of food rou tinely linked to the lunar cycle, just as humans achieve long life, children, and prosperity from the beneficence of forefathers.
Everyone remembers that a person has three debts (rna) in life: to the rsi sages, the gods, and the ancestors, paid respectively by reciting Veda, per forming sacrifices, and raising children. As constant reminders, Samavedam, whose grandfather performed agni-stoma, always wore two silver rings with ruby stones on his right forefinger, known in Telugu as tarjanilu, also the name of the two rings, each engraved with ancestors’ names in deva-nagari letters.
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Despite the ubiquity and neediness of ancestors, there is decided ambiva lence about an individual’s fate after death, as is true for the Vedic-Hindu tra dition in general. Contradictions can be controversial even in in the course of a ritual and some have already been mentioned. For example, wives who die before their husbands and receive the female-directed musi-vayanam ritual are dispatched on the tenth day to Gauri-loka, realm of the goddess Gauri. Two days later, however, male-directed rituals promote them into pitr-hood via their husbands’ or their own parental ancestors, designating an alto gether different celestial company. And always contentious is the question of ista-purta, merited results gained from the performance of sacrifices and other deeds.70
It may be recalled from his capsule biography in Chapter 3 that Duvvuri Yajulu learned from an old stranger that his achievement of agni-stoma would become worthless when he reached his eighties. He connected this prediction to the prior death of Surya who took their agni-hotra with her on the cremation pyre. In his mind, the merit from yajna is not permanent. Regarding rebirth, he said, a record of multiple soma sacrifices, however great, is not enough to escape the cycle. Accomplished deeds are for cleansing of one’s conscious
ness (citta-suddhi) and for the pleasure of Paramesvara, the highest god. An ahitagni, still a householder, cannot escape the route from ancestor to rebirth. Only the world renouncer has a chance at release.
Cayanulu took another approach, arguing that merit from sacrifices could be rewarded with a kind of immortality, not merely with long life and prosper ity. This is a frequent topic in sabha debates: whether or not amrta, immortal ity, is more than the popular desire to see a hundred autumns or a thousand full moons and whether svarga-loka, heaven, or brahma-loka, the heaven of Brahma, are permanent or temporary states. Rg Veda 10.14.8 is cited in which the deceased is invited to receive a new body, join his ancestors with Yama in the highest heaven, and enjoy the rewards of his sacrifices and good works. Woven into discussion is a related subject, tyaga, “abandonment” to the gods of the results (phala, fruit) of one’s ritual labor rather than cashing them in for eternal reward.
One expression that surfaces compares the temporary pleasures of heaven to a holiday resort: a vacationer may enjoy himself as long as his wallet is full. When the money runs out he has to go home. Brian Smith mines texts to describe the sacrificial journey to heaven as a round trip. Whether it is by bird, cart, ship, or chariot, it is “just long enough to mark out and reserve a space for the next life.”71 Baballa, in his dying days, appreciated the fact that his aruna-ketuka sacrifice would reward him with a visit to brahma-loka and, however briefly, the company of Brahma.
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As mentioned earlier in the discussion of ancestors in the catur-masya (part 6) those ahitagni who went on to become soma sacrificers are aware of the privileging of soma-vant ancestors, those who offered and therefore drank soma. TS 2.6.12.2 reveals two other classes of pitr, barhisad and agni-svatta, respectively, those who sat on the sacred barhis grass to offer cooked food and those consumed by Agni in cremations, designations that occurred already in RV 10.15.4, 11.72 Pandits almost without exception agree that the path to the Fathers lies ahead. Already when learning the Taittiriya Brahmana they knew of successive existences beyond the present.73 And yet it is not easy to become an ancestor. If proper rituals are lacking after cremation the deceased’s dis
embodied spirit (preta, one who has “departed” from the body) may become a wandering, troublesome ghost, a bhuta. The Apara Brahman goes to work precisely to ensure passage to the other world in a ritual program building a temporary body for the deceased, one to cover the naked, vulnerable spirit that exited the used body on the pyre. This requires ten days, a gestation of sorts, just as the embryo in its mother needs ten lunar months before birth, and the baby and mother stay ten days secluded in the birthing room before entering the social world.
The invisible transitional body is constructed a step at a time from head to internal powers by ten days of mantras with rice ball (pinda), sesame seed (tila), and water offerings. The carry-over (ati-vahika) body having safely covered the preta, rituals may now eliminate all the material objects in which the preta
might have sought momentary refuge. These include a small stone (preta-sila) worshipped by all in the mourning family; a shroud piece worn by the chief mourner, usually a son; the rice pinda and the crows who arrive to peck at leftovers; kusa grass planted and watered; nine different grains (nava-dhanya) seeded, watered, and fed cooked food daily; a goat either sacrificed or set free to wander in lieu of immolation; an effigy of leaves, sticks, or powders; and of course the bone and tooth fragments recovered from the cremation ashes. On the tenth day all face abandonment (visarjana). One by one each is thrown in a river or canal, including the sprouting nava-dhanya basket. An exception is the jar of an ahitagni’s or patni’s twice-burned bone and tooth fragments that is planted in a plowed furrow. The ashes of all others go into the water.74
The eleventh day is devoted to feeding bhokta, a degraded subset of Brahmans willing to be “eaters” of food for the deceased, as in other rituals they accept dana (gifts) to appease malicious planets such as Sani, Saturn. The chief mourner, usually a son, serves a full-course feast to eleven of them in a row, representatives of the eleven Rudras. The twelfth day is another cru
cial one in which the sapindi-karana conveys the deceased to join ancestors in svarga, heaven, a journey of a twelve-month year in the older texts but later246 vedic voices
condensed to a symbolic twelve days, perhaps in concern that a ritual surro gate might die during the lengthy period.
That surrogate today is a selected bhokta Brahman who assumes the guise of the deceased and accepts provisions for the year-long journey, an array of uncooked food that may include ten bags of paddy, a bed, bed linens, clothes for all seasons, an umbrella, cane, shoes, and gold or cash. It is traditional that his personification of the dead about to depart this world expresses persistent demands for more and more supplies. This degraded Brahman leaves and should not be seen again. He must perform long santi-karma himself to elimi
nate the dreadful effects of such dangerous gifts.
Once there is secure reception among the pitr the deceased becomes an ancestor to the living, bouncing prior ancestors, male or female, up a rung of the ladder of Vasus, Rudras, Adityas, the closest three generations, with the Visve-devas, the All-gods, residing in the remote space beyond. As Baballa said repeatedly, employing his own gendered terms, the self (atman) is situated on the middle rung of a seven-fold lineage, three generations ahead (father, grand
father, great-grandfather), three more below (son, grandson, great-grandson). All those “above” are entitled to sraddha rituals of a daily, monthly, and annual character, with far more attention paid to closer Fathers. The remote ancestors receive only token nourishment, rice grains that stick to the offering hand, since they are in the process of dissolving among the All-gods before return
ing to this world in other life forms.
Specific rules apply, however, regarding the one who “leaves water” for the departed and the frequency of such performance. As Baballa lay dying he feared that his cancer-ridden son might die before he did, thus preventing this crucial son-to-father offering. But Bullebayi lived just long enough to leave water for Baballa before he himself died and his own son, Yajnesvara Prasad, could continue. As remarked earlier, it is noteworthy that ancestors show up at soma rites to receive their share of the beverage.75
The thirteenth day is usually devoted to an assembly of regional Veda pandits in a memorial session of respectful debates and encomia to honor the deceased. With the fortnight of rituals completed the agrahara or hamlet returns to routines of the living. The house of the deceased, as in the cases of Lanka, Cayanulu, and others, may be closed for a year to clear it of “dust and wind,” a generic Telugu term for hauntings by evil spirits. Mrtyu is asked to remain at a reasonable distance.76