iShTikA and somayAga

Arya, the famous frog hymn of RV mentions Atiratra Soma Yaga, do you think it could be same as the one which involves piling of Altar as preserved by Nambuthiris?

That’s correct it mentions atitrAtra & there is little doubt that it is the same soma ritual being mentioned. Now the question is whether that implies that all other aspects of the somayAga as a whole were the same in the RV period.

From a philological perspective, we do not find the mention of iShTaka brick. iShTaka has Iranian cognate; hence, it would imply that the brick goes back to the I-Ir period – by the standard white indological model that should predate the RV.+++(5)+++ Hence, we have conundrum here because while the related word iShTi & the word vedi are repeatedly mentioned in the RV we don’t have iShTaka.

Moreover, we do not encounter the term piling of the chiti which we encounter severally in the YVs. I had pointed out earlier that the evidence for iShTaka being borrowed from BMAC or Harappa is weak – e.g., presence in Tocharian with a more extended root form relating to clay.

Hence, I posit that the RV core was composed in remote period before the I-Ir split or acquisition of iShTaka in a ritual context. It underwent a degree of linguistic shift towards the later IA dialect in which we have it. As per this hypothesis the old vedi-s were likely daubed clay constructions rather than from piled bricks though some of geometry was already there because our ancestor chyavAna is mentioned in the RV as measuring out the vedi.+++(5)+++ So I think its construction with bricks was a later innovation even though a version of the ritual goes back to the RV period.