The rise of yajña and

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The rise of yajña and Kauśika exceptionalism

Ritual classes

The extant Vedic ritual is bifurcated into two domains the gṛhya (the household rites and rites of passage) and the śrauta (large-scale/grand rituals).

First, in operational terms, they are distinguished by the use of a single fire (the aupāsana) in the former and the three fires with the central vedi in the latter; the grander śrauta rites involve the construction of a more complex system of altars.

Second, the gṛhya rites are either done by the ritual patron by himself or with a single ritual specialist, the purohita. In contrast, the śrauta rituals involve an increasingly larger number of ritual specialists, the ṛtvik-s, culminating in a number of 16 for the great sacrifices.

Range

However, as can be seen from the extent gṛhyasūtra and śrautasūtra of the Atharvaveda, respectively the Kauśikasūtra and the Vaitānasūtra, these ritual structures are not strictly mutually exclusive. In terms of their structure, frequency and objectives, it can be easily seen that the Full Moon and New Moon rites, the Cāturmāsya and the annual animal sacrifice overlap with the gṛhya equivalents and/or are close to that domain of ritual activity. On the other end, the rites like Rājasūya, Vājapeya and Aśvamedha are clearly part of the exclusive śrauta domain. In between are the various lower-end Somasaṃsthā-s that belong to the śrauta domain, but might have originally had roots in private one-day soma rites closer to the gṛhya pole.+++(4)+++

Proto shrauta

A key question confronting students of early Indo-European tradition is how far back we can trace the antecedents of these ritual structures. Using the comparative method, it can be tentatively said, that there was already some kind of bifurcation between household rituals and grand rituals performed on behalf of an elite ritual patron/leader by multiple ritual specialists in the proto-Indo-Hittite (Indo-Anatolian) period. However, the extensive West Asian substratal influence on the Hittite and other Anatolian rituals prevents us from a more precise reconstruction of the most ancient strata of IE ritual traditions.

At the other end, closer to the terminal breakup of the main IE branches, we can confidently state that the common Indo-Iranian tradition already featured a version of the śrauta fire ritual with multiple ritual experts more or less mapping on to the hotṛ, the adhvaryu and the brahman.+++(5)+++ Further, comparisons of the Indo-Iranian system with:

(i) the central cult at Rome;
(ii) the Iguvine Tablets of the Umbrian branch of Italic;
(iii) fragmentary information of the Mycenaean and Homeric Greek rites indicate that a version of what might be called proto-śrauta rituals was already in place in early IE times.

By early IE, we mean the ancestral IE tradition after the divergence of Anatolian but before the Indo-European expansion from their steppe heartland (archaeologically identified with the early Yamnaya culture).

Branching

However, within each branch, these śrauta-like rites underwent considerable transformation via the exaggeration or de-emphasis of particular facets, innovation within the IE tradition and to a smaller degree incorporation of some non-IE practices. For example, there is no evidence for an early core IE ritual using soma, though there were definitely rituals featuring libatory offerings.+++(4)+++ However, in the I-Ir branch, the offering of soma rose to centrality. Hence, it would seem that the soma ritual was a development in this branch of the IE domain that likely took the place of earlier libatory offerings. Moreover, even within a lineage, we can see evidence for evolution, with both cooperation and competition between different ritual sub-traditions. Whether soma (as in Ephedra) as a sacrament was adopted from a non-IE group remains unclear.

IIr diversity

We can also say that the ancestral Indo-Iranian tradition definitely had certain ritual diversity even in the mainstream — there were practitioners with a more hautra-oriented style of ritual and those with a more ādhvaryava-oriented style. In the Zoroastrian lineage of Iranians, the hautra-style seems to have dominated (Zarathustra called himself a zaotar), whereas on the Indic side after an initial hautra dominance (probably also in the ancestors of the Kalasha), it shifted towards an ādhvaryava dominance that was likely catalyzed by a new group of adhvaryu entrants with a Viṣṇu-focal tradition (which also led to the broader Indic phenomenon of the Vaiṣṇava sect).

Factors leading to IA yajna

In the early Indo-Aryan śrauta tradition, the soma ritual greatly expanded and fostered a new specialist class with it — udgātṛ-s, who like the adhvaryu-s, ate into the original domain of the hotṛ-s.

Nevertheless, by the time of the initial Aryan conquest of India, a certain compact was reached between these ritual specialists, such that each got their share in the performance of grand śrauta rituals.

That said, the question remains whether we can trace some of the subtleties of ritual evolution prior to the rise of the ādhvaryava dominance and the factor(s) that predisposed the tradition towards it. We posit that, within the I-Ir world, there arose a practice, which was formally termed yajña (Ir: yasna) that became the foundation of a reformulated śrauta ritual which provided the ground for the rise of the adhvaryu-s.+++(5)+++

yajna antiquity

The equivalence of the IA yajña and Ir yasna is apparent from the fact that the Iranian tradition uses the term in a sense identical to the Vedic tradition as seen in the Avestan incantation:

surunuyå nō +yasnem xšnuyå nō yasnahe upa nō yasnem āhiša
May you hear our yasna [invocation]; be pleased with our yasna; may you sit at our yasna.

The IA yaj- and Ir yaz- root has derivatives of its cognates somewhat widely attested across the Indo-Anatolian world: Anatolian branch (Luwian): izi (=worship, Skt yajati); Greek: hagios (=holy); Italic: ieiunus (=fasting). However, in I-Ir, it displays a rather extensive development with several distinct formations that are only attested within this branch and often shared by its two daughter clades IA and Ir, e.g., yajña : yasna; yešti : iṣṭi; yajana : yadhana; yajata : yazata; yajñiya : yesnya.+++(5)+++

IIr meaning

This suggests that though the root meant worship/holiness even in the ancestral Indo-Anatolian tradition, it likely became a technical term for the solemn śrauta form of the ritual, yajña, in the common Aryan period. That it was the śrauta form of the ritual is clear from the fact that the performance of the yasna on the Iranian side minimally requires ritual specialists known as the zaotar (=hotṛ) and the rāthbhīka (= ṛtvik) playing the role of the hotṛ and adhvaryu respectively. While today the surviving Iranian ritual only employs these two, the original version in the Avestan tradition had a set of 8 (half the IA set of 16).

Further, the development of the yasna ritual went along with the development of Yajurveda-like material, in the Iranian Yasna texts in 72 chapters relating to its performance. Thus, the expansion of the formations of the root yaj-/yaz- in the I-Ir tradition can be associated with the development of a formalized yajña ritual.

Simpler Ir version

The yajña as we on the Indo-Aryan side perform it is rather complex and probably reflects a survival from its formalization in the Kuru-Pāñcāla period. However, on the Iranian side, we have a retention of a more primitive version of the yasna.

While some might argue for a simplification from the degeneration of the tradition as the number of ritual specialists listed as 8 was brought down to 2 in the extant Iranian rite. We would counter by saying that as a tradition under an existential threat, they simply came down to the minimal version (as in smaller IA rituals like full/new moon rites) in the extent form, but the Yasna texts describe the situation when their tradition was at its acme. However, even that ancient version is clearly simpler than what we have on the IA side.

This simpler version however gives us some clues about the ancestral I-Ir version before the extraordinary complexification on the IA side; hence, we note some key points of it:

1. The ritual involves the offering of haoma (=soma), ritual flour cakes known as draonah (= Skt droṇa: a measure of flour) which are equivalents of the Vedic puroḍāśa and ghee. This suggests that the soma offering was a key part of the yajña in the shared I-Ir tradition.
2. The offerings were made in a special ritual enclosure parallel to the Vedic version. In the extant Iranian version, it is performed in a permanent designated ritual enclosure in the temple of the fire altar of Mithra. This ritual enclosure is marked by furrows just as the adhvaryu marks it with furrows made with the sphya in the IA tradition.
3. Before the actual ritual, a sub-ritual known as the paragṇā is performed to prepare the haoma and extract the juice from it for use in the ritual.
4. The haoma libation involves the recitation of the Haoma Yašt akin to the deployment of maṇḍala-9 incantations in the IA soma ritual.
5. The zaotar recites long incantations similar to the śastra recitations of the hotṛ — the Zoroastrian reflex of the Iranian tradition being a hautra-dominant one, this takes a prominent place with a smaller role for the adhvaryu cognate, the rāthbhīka.
6. The yasna has a ritual patron who is like the yajamāna, but he does not have any manthra recitations at all unlike his Hindu counterpart.
7. The yasna is performed daily in the morning. This is an important departure from the extant Vedic ritual for there is no indication that even an ekāha ritual is performed daily. There may be year-long rituals, but there is no indication that it was continued for perpetuity. However, in the Ṛgveda, we have hints of the performance of a daily or more simplified soma rite. Hence, we posit that the Iranian yasna might retain features of this ancestral simpler version.

IIr Core texts

Given all these indications that the yajña/yasna ritual tradition developed within the shared I-Ir heritage, we depart from the mainstream Indo-Europeanists, Indologists, and Iranicists in proposing that the core of the hautra and ādhvaryava texts and their Iranian counterparts were not composed after the IA and the Ir had gone their separate ways but during the common Aryan period already starting in the western reaches of the steppes. We do accept the fact that since then the texts might have accreted some clearly newer material and also been reworked in terms of organization and the linguistic register in which they have come down to us. Hence, we propose that we can find signals of the early rise of the yajña ritual within the extant Vedic texts.

Kaushika signal

A simple investigation in this regard is to see how the term yajña is distributed across three core texts of the Vedic corpus that relate to the performance of the ritual. Given that these texts are of different sizes (a numerological problem we have alluded to before), we used the most natural unit for normalization of an old Sanskrit text — the total syllable count:

There is a clear over-representation of the term yajña in the Yajurveda as represented by the Taittirīya-saṃhitā. In contrast, the RV and the AV saṃhitā queried here show similar densities of the word. This indicates that the word yajña has a special association with the ādhvaryava tradition. Thus, given the above discussion on its I-Ir roots, we posit that the formalization of the yajña ritual provided the ground for the rise of the ādhvaryava tradition. We have to emphasize that we do not mean that the ādhvaryava tradition invented it in the first place — it was common to the hautra and ādhvaryava traditions as indicated by its Iranian reflex.+++(5)+++ However, its expansion was a pre-disposition that favored the ādhvaryava dominance. This leads to the question of whether there was some group within the I-Ir tradition that facilitated its expansion. At least on the IA side, we can address this because the RV is divided into compositions that are primarily grouped together by clan. Hence, just as we compared different Vedic texts in the above table, we can see if there is some kind of anisotropy within the RV itself.

Figure 1.

Figure 1 shows the density per 100 ṛk-s of 8 terms associated with the yajña for each maṇḍala of the RV as bar graphs:

1. yajña and formations incorporating it;
2. yajamāna — the ritual patron;
3. hotṛ;
4. adhvaryu/adhvara;
5. Jātavedas, the Agni devatā specifically associated with the ritual (see below);
6. Vaiśvānara: the Agni devatā representing the universal nature of Agni;
7. puroḷāśa: the ritual flour cake;
8. manth- the root meaning churn/agitate used both in the sense of churning out the fire with the fire-drill and stirring the soma for preparing drinks mixed with milk or barley water.

Figure 2.

Figure 2 shows the same data such that each term is normalized by the maximum value for that term. Thus, the maṇḍala with the maximum density will be 1, and every other maṇḍala will be a fraction between [0,1] of that maximal maṇḍala.

The exceptionalism of the Kauśika-maṇḍala (RV3) with Viśvāmitra the son of Gāthin as its primary composer is immediately apparent. In 6 out of the 8 terms, it shows the maximum density, and in the remaining two it is the second most dense. With respect to these terms, most other maṇḍala-s clearly pull away as a separate band from RV3.

Jātavedas and Vaiśvānara

Apart from the word yajña itself, we find the Kauśika exceptionalism in certain other words to be illuminating. The god Agni manifests as several devatā-s in the Vedic tradition, the two main ones are Agni Jātavedas and Agni Vaiśvānara. There are other less frequent ones like Agni Rakṣohan, Agni Anīkavat, Agni Saptavat and the like. Of these, Agni Jātavedas is central to the concept of yajña as he is identified with the fire established at the beginning of the yajña through the churning action of the fire-drill and thereafter burning unbroken through the yajña. Hence, it is rather notable that the root related to churning, manth-, is also over-represented in RV3. He is also identified with the Agni maintained through the generations by the ritualists, an ancestral IE tradition.+++(5)+++ Thus, he is seen as the local divine hotṛ who conveys the oblations offered in the ritual fire to the gods — a concept clearly expressed by Madhuchandas, the son of Viśvāmitra, in the opening ṛk of the RV. Hence, one may interpret Agni Jātavedas as both the one with knowledge of the birth of the ritual in the proximal sense and the one with knowledge of it in the sense of continuity from the primordial establishment of the fire.

Bhṛgu connection

In this regard, the Kauśika-s of maṇḍala-3 are known from tradition to have a special connection through marriage and reciprocal ritual collaboration with the Bhṛgu-s, one of the primordial institutor clans of the fire ritual.+++(4)+++ Further, in the RV, Jātavedas is offered oblations at the dawn ritual (specifically mentioned by the Viśvāmitra-s of RV3). Thus, Jātavedas also has knowledge of the beginning (birth) of the day’s ritual. This supports the idea that, like the Iranian daily morning yasna, there was probably also an early IA daily yajña ritual.+++(4)+++

Vaiśvānara from Bharadvāja-s

Agni Jātavedas is paired with a complementary universal manifestation of the god, Agni Vaiśvānara — one common to all folks, unlike the private Jātavedas who is associated with a particular ritualist clan from the time they established the fire ritual, Vaiśvānara is described as the universal fire from whom all other fires emerge as branches (RV 1.59.1). He is simultaneously in the middle of the earth, at the center of the celestial hemispheres indicating his manifestation as solar radiance and also at the equinoctial colure marking the celestial path of the gods, the devayāna, associated with the yearly ritual cycle. He is the bringer of light for the ārya and the smiter of their dasyu enemies. However, despite his universality, keeping with his highest density in RV6, Agni Vaiśvānara seems to have had a special connection with the Bharadvāja-s, one of the ancient Āṅgirasa clans associated with the foundation of the fire rite (e.g., RV 1.59.7, RV 6.7- entire sūkta, RV 6.8- entire sūkta, RV 6.9.7). While RV3 is not the highest ranked in density of Vaiśvānara, it comes second and is one of the few maṇḍala-s (other than RV6 and RV7) with an over-representation of this Agni deity. Hence, we suggest that the Kauśika-s promulgated and popularized a version of the yajña by presenting an installation of the global Agni Vaiśvānara as Jātavedas, who is local to the ritual being initiated at dawn.+++(4)+++

puroḷāśa

Another notable word where RV3 shows unusual density is puroḷāśa (RV dialect for puroḍāśa), the equivalent of the Iranian draonah, a flour cake made for the ritual. The baking and the offering of the puroḷāśa appear to have been a central feature of the basic form of both the IA and Ir yajña. Its prominence in RV3 suggests that the Kauśika-s probably contributed to making it a key feature of the yajña. Interestingly, while several clans (including the Kauśika-s) offer the puroḷāśa-s to Indra, only the Kauśika-s have an entire sūkta pertaining to offering them to Agni Jātavedas at the three soma offerings, morning, midday and evening, with gāyatrī, triṣṭubh and jagatī incantations followed by one for the atitrātra. In the extant ritual, at these offerings, Jātavedas is seen as manifesting as Agni Sviṣṭakṛt — the one who ensures that the ritual is correctly done. Thus, the centrality of Jātavedas in the developing yajña was accompanied by the incorporation of a special puroḷāśa offering.+++(4)+++

Several of these actions in the “adhvara”, namely the churning of the fire (manth-), making of the puroḷāśa, and more generally the preparation of the soma are clearly related to the domain of the adhvaryu. Thus, even though the yajña in the Vaiśvāmitra maṇḍala is still a hotṛ-dominated tradition, it had laid the groundwork for the rise of the adhvaryu, which is seen in the tradition of the YV.

yajāmahe

Parallel to the rise of the reformulated yajña, was another distinct ritual development related to root IA yaj-/Ir yaz, viz., the rise of a certain type of formula, with the verb IA yajāmahe and Ir yazamaide (we sacrifice to); e.g., tryambakaṃ yajāmahe RV 7.59.12. This type of formula occurs only 10 times in the RV (RV1:

, RV7:

, RV8:

, RV10:

). Given that it is almost entirely absent in the core family books of the RV, despite arising from the same root as yajña, it might not be closely linked to the above-discussed developments. Similarly, it is not frequently found in the Yajurveda collections associated with the ādhvaryava tradition either; e.g., Taittirīya-saṃhitā

; Taittirīya-brāhmaṇa

.+++(5)+++

However, it occurs more commonly in the distinctive smaller Atharvan collections: AV-vulgate

; AV-Paippalāda

. Interestingly, these instances in the AV saṃhitā-s closely parallel the cognate occurrences in the Yašt layer of the Avestan corpus. This formula was finally incorporated into the later synthetic elaboration of the yajña in the form of the famous preamble incantation of the hotṛ before he recites the ṛk for the offering: “ye3 yajāmahe”.

Overview

From these observations, we may infer that:

1. After the initial reformulation of the old IE śrauta-class ritual as the yajña in the ancestral I-Ir tradition, it underwent several temporally and focally distinct developments.
2. However, these developments tended to interact with each other repeatedly resulting in synthetic reformulations.
3. One development was the reformulation of the yajña among the Kauśika-s and probably their Iranian counterparts (the Sparśa-s mentioned by Baudhāyana?).
   • With regard to the possible Ir-Kauśika interaction one may also point to the special place of Mitra for both gave rise to one form of the ritual.
   • This provided the ground for the rise of the ādhvaryava tradition. Another, which probably rose in the Atharvan tradition and its Iranic counterpart was the sacrificial offering with the formula “yajāmahe”.
4. The above two developments came together in a synthesis even before the Indo-Iranians split up. Hence, we argue that even though further synthesis might have happened both on the IA and Ir sides after they split, much of their branch of the IE religion developed prior to their split.+++(5)+++ A corollary to this, contrary to the mainstream reconstruction, is that the original core of much of the Vedic (and Avestan) scripture was composed not in their final destinations but much earlier on the steppe.

yajño hi ta indra vardhano bhūd
uta priyaḥ sutasomo miyedhaḥ ।
yajñena yajñam ava yajñiyaḥ san
yajñas te vajram ahihatya āvat ॥

Verily, o Indra, the yajña became your magnifier,
as also the dear soma libation, the ritual offering.
With the yajña aid the yajña being the one who receives the yajña;
the yajña aided your vajra in the slaying of Ahi.
-Viśvāmitra, the son of Gāthin, RV 3.32.12