A Dictionary of the Vedic Rituals
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A DICTIONARY OF THE VEDIC RITUALS BASED ON THE SRAUTA AND GRHYA SUTRAS CHITRABHANU SEN nn CONCEPT PUBLISHING COMPANY UJlS DELHI Reprint 1982, 2001 First edition 1978 © Chitrabhanu Sen 1976 Chitrabhanu Sen ( b. 1927) Published and Printed by Ashok Kumar Mittal Concept Publishing Company A/15-16, Commercial Block, Mohan Garden New Delhi- 11 0059 (India) Phones: 5648039, 5649024 Fax: 091-(ll)-5648053 E-mail: [email protected] W TO THE MEMORY OF MY FATHER ARUN SEN, B.A. (CANTAB), BARRIS TER-A T-LA ACADEMICIAN AND LINGUIST WHO TAUGHT ME TO UNDERSTAND INDIA AND HER PEOPLE THROUGH THE CLASSICS CONTENTS Introduction 9 Acknowledgements 17 Abbreviations 18 List of Works and Authors 2! Transliteration and Order of the NagarrLette Arrangement of the Entries 27 Measurements 28 The Dictionary: Srauta Section 29 The Dictionary: Grhya Section 127 APPENDICES 16 9 Description of Plates Plates I - m Plans 1-9 INTRODUCTION Our knowledge of the vedic ritual is derived with a varying degree of accuracy from three sources: the Sarhhitas, the Brahmanas, the Srauta and Grhyasutras. But noncTf these books can be taken as the starting point of the vedic ritual. The earliest form of the vedic ritual remains unrecorded. BUt tl CarHcSt refcrencc t0 the vcdic "^1 ^ found in the Rgvedasamhita. r « , ?. The names of sacnficia. objects are mentioned : yupa, idhma, samidh, juhu, gravanah, drone, etc Ihe three savanas of the Soma „ sacrifice have been mentioned. The Rgveda also knew the existence of at least seven priests : Hotr , Potr, Nesfr, Agnidh, Prasastr, Adhvaryu and Brahman i A stage was reached when the hymns, as a poet claims, could only be understood by mcaTof ajaenfice » It « certain therefore that in the Rgvedic period the ritual was fairly extenswe {h °thCr hand 8 largC number ' of hvmns in the R • gveda which «„, « , ™' °J? l have no ?gVtt,a8aifahUa Was not a book of ^ ritual. AsvalSyana cou.d not maintain the orderoroe of ^the hymns in K his sutra.Sayana, who was brought up in the orthodox ritualistic tradition believed that the Rgvedasamhita was a book of ritual. He took pains to prov" no anomaly that the™^ was when Asvalayana ,n his Wasutra could not employ the first verse o L samh^samhita n the first sacrifice, DarsapDrnamasa he described * There are instances that the meaning and purpose of the hymns were disregarded or arb.trar.ly altered when a hymn was employed ,n a rite. The word kasmaiS an interroR^ive pronoun meaning to whom, when used in a rite was turned to a deity. Ka Max Muller comments : But soon a new adjective was formed, and not only the hymns, but fice also offered to the god, were called Kaya or who-ish.' -In course of time the word kTya t,ze ni had frame a ru,e to form 7 the w° rd - in ^Zi^z the H s r«Rgvedasamhitar has rbeen ass.gned to the Hotr , one of the principal priests, whose duty it to recite certain is hymns called sastras, distinctly with proper accent The Atharvavedasarhhita, which contains popular spells, has no practical use in the 6.kntmos t of the t.me dunng the serv.ee. His duty it is to supervise the sacrifice Keith 1 25 ,a,Cr madetobr ingt-Atha,vaveda into the -circle of the ^.h?Uireeor^odox vVedash";"?by the ,: addit.on to the collection of book XX which contains the hvmns K, be used the by Brahnanacchamsin priest in the ritual of the Son*, sacrifice* But despiteTh attempts it rema.ncd beyond the pale of orthodoxy. In many grhya rites however a number of the verses ' W£ of the Atharvaveda have been used.' But the case with the sarhhitas of Yajurveda and Samaveda very k quite different In the arrangement of these later sarhhitas the ritualistic bias can easily be s en Th AdhVnu 1Sta S Wh ""'^ ° Ut thC manUaI perations of the TfH ^ ,° ° sacrifice equ red a spS^ T iStiD8 f ° ° Pr SC VerSC WCre CO»eCted separate called Yajurveda, * slhi^ ^^JTTand\TTthe formulasT were ca.Ied thej^. This was obviously a priestly creation 10 Introduction The sarhhita of Yajurveda which has been preserved in two schools, iukla (white or pure) and 10 krsna (black) , in five recensions, were created exclusively for the ceremonial purpose. The verses of the Yajurvedasamhitas are mostly borrowed from the Rgvedasamhita for the sacrificial purpose of the Adhvaryu, in many cases without any real propriety and with deliberate altera- tions to adapt them to the ritual. 11 In the ritual application of the verses a significant change occurred. The accentuation of the verses is entirely ignored. The Adhvaryu simply mutters the verses in accentless tone, and no one at a distance can hear or understand him. This mode of pronunciation is called upamsu. Evidently, the system of accentuation which was an integral part of the text lost its force in the ritual. So is the case of all other hymns when used as mantra. It is enjoined that all mantras except japa etc. are to be pronounced in ekasruti (q. v.), monotone. The grammarians were, however, sticklers for the use of accents, and they insisted on it. As a note of warning to the delinquents Pataiijali quotes a verse in his Mahabhasya : dusfah sabdah svarato varnato vd mithydprayukto na tamarthamdha. sa vdgvajro yajamanam hinasti yathendrasatruh svarato' parddhat. 12 An interesting legend is repeatedly cited to show what would befall a person who put a wrong accent on a wrong place. Vrtra performed a sacrifice to punish Indra who desicrated his sacrifice by forcibly drinking soma juice without being invited. The mantra was indraSatrur- varadhasva, 't> Agni, the foe of Indra',' prosper, and the word indra&atru being a tatpurusa compound should have acute accent on its last syllable. But Vrtra pronounced the mantra with a misplaced acute accent on the first syllable of Indrasatru, and as a result the word became a bahuvrihi compound, meaning having Indra as a foe prosper. Vrtra himself was killed. 1* In spite of the views of the grammarians a fundamental change occurred, and the mantras had lost the accents. It follows therefore that the Adhvaryu who is the most important function- ary in the manual operations of the sacrifice did not have to learn the accents of his prayer book.With a penchant for variety the priests introduced another methed of pronunciation which .is sai.' to be a little louder than upamsu. This is called dhvana, murmur, in which vowels aid consonants can be distinguished but as a whole the letters cannot be distinguished.lt is cer tainly a sign of decay. Samavedasamhita is The also a liturgical collection. But by no means it is an original It almost entirely one. is a verbatim copy of the Rgvedasamhita. Of the total 1810 verses or verses verses are 1549 (261 repetitions) contained in arcika and the uttararcika all but 75 are found the 8th and 9th mandates of the in Rgvedasamhita. The Samavedasmhita has been assigned to the Udgdtr priests who chant the verses called stotras set to a melody called soman chiefly in the sacrifice. Soma The Udgatr priests have hardly any role in the sacrifice apart from chanting the stotras. While Adhvaryu the priests have discarded the accent of the Yajurvedasamhita, the Udgdtr priests adopt a peculiar fashion in chanting the stotras. The verse is broken up in various parts called prastava, udgitha, pratihdra, upadrava and nidhana, and then by repetition of the pddas (see stoma) and interpolations of syllables (see stobha), the chant assumes a bizarre form. It is so intricate that it is 14 almost impossible to determine its exact nature. A stage of stagnation has been reached wiien no new literary piece can be created, and the technicalities of recitation or chanting are the primary aims. I is a very fond practice of the priests to render a word unintelligible by a peculiar pro- cess of permutation and combination. Thus the summons samsclva, let us praise, becomes som- sdvom or soiomsavom or somsdvo (see dhdva & partigara). It becomes a meaningless jargon. It js no wender therefore that long before the Buddha there grew a strong resentment 1 Introduction 1 against the ritual practice : Then the seers, the kavaseyas, knowing this, say, 'To what end shall we repeat the veda, to what end shall we sacrifice? For we sacrifice breath in speech, or in breath speech Or again : People say, Hymn,Hymn. The hymn is indeed the earth. For from it all that exists springs. 1* Apart from the technicalities which were constantly developed, changed and added, the sacrifice itself suffered a considerable transformation. The sacrifice once represented the social activity of the worshippers. It was a web of practices, emanating from the social thinking and emphasizing particular aspects of life. But with the decay of the society and the change in the social life the sacrifice, in abstraction, drifted to its natural death. We shall find that within a sacrifice various rites have been combined indiscriminately. They have no logical bearing on the sacrifice in which they are included. Keith observes : As a result of the constant development of the ritual, the festivals of the srauta type are full of details which are of no consequence with regard to the meaning of the sacrifice : practically in no case is an important rite addressed to one effort god only : the on the contrary was clearly to find as much room as possible for as many gods as possible. 17 The proliferation and transformation of the vedic sacrifice that took place have been confirmed by the ritualists. Some sacrifices are considered models and called prakrti.