The Orion, or Researches into the Antiquity of the Vedas c10.12

c10.12

Now as regards the meaning it appears to me that *ayana* at first denoted nothing more than the passage of the sun. Gradually it meant a division of time regulated by such passage. The *Âgrayana-ishtis* thus appear to have originally meant the two half-yearly sacrifices performed on the first day of each *ayana*, which seems to be regarded somewhat like the new year's day at present. Gârgya Nârâyana, in his commentary on Âshvalâyana's Shrauta Sûtras (i. 2. 9. 1.) derives *Âgrayana* from *agra + ayana*; but interprets it to mean a sacrifice which is followed by eating (*ayana*,) that is, which requires to be performed before the new harvest is used for domestic purposes. He thus takes *ayana* to mean eating, and as the *Âgrayaneshtis* in later works like Manu (iv. 27) were described as "New-harvest sacrifices," all commentators have adopted this explanation of the word. But it appears to me to be evidently of latter origin and invented to account for the nature of the sacrifice when owing to the falling back of seasons the *Âgrayaneshtis* came to be performed not at the beginning of each *ayana* as they should have been, but at wrong times. The necessity of such an explanation must have been still more keenly felt, when instead of two half-yearly sacrifices, the *Âgrayanaishtis* were performed thrice a year. Âshvalâyana, it is true, gives only two, one in Vasanta and the other in Sharad, the old beginnings of the Devayâna and the Pitriyâna and the real commencement of the two *ayanas* But he has mentioned three kinds of grain that may be used, *vrîhi*, *shyâmâka* and *yava* (i. 2. 9. 1,) and his commentator Gârgya Nârâyana observes that *yava* and *shyâmâka* are to be used simultaneously in Sharad (i.2. 9. 13). It appears, however, that the fact, that three kinds of grain were sanctioned for use, soon gave rise to three *Agrayana-ishtis*—one in Vasanta with *vrihi*; the second in Varshâ with *shyâmâka*, and the third in Sharad with *yava*. But that it is a practice of later origin is evident from a passage in the Taittirîya Saṃhitâ (v. 1. 7. 3) which states that "twice is grain cooked for the year," clearly meaning thereby that there were only two *Agrayana-ishtis* in a year when the new harvest was first offered to gods. I am therefore of opinion that originally there were only *two* half-yearly sacrifices at the commencement of each *ayana*, and as *vrihi* was used, on the occasion of the first of these *ishtis*, the word *ayana* or *hâyana* naturally came to denote the grain so used, and that *ayana* in *Agrayana* originally meant not eating as the later writers have imagined, but a half-year as the word usually denotes. This way of deriving and explaining the word is not a new invention. For notwithstanding the fact that *Agrayana* and *Agrahâyana* are explained by Târânâtha as referring to the sacrifice of grain and eating, yet he derives *Agrayana*, a word of the same group, from *agra* + *ayana* and explains it to mean "the Uttarâyana was in its front."* Even native scholars thus appear to be aware of the fact that *Agrayana* could be or was derived from *ayana* meaning the Uttarâyana. Indeed, we cannot otherwise account why the *Agrayaneshtis* were originally celebrated at the beginning of Vasanta and the end of Varshâ as stated by Âshvalâyana. The *Agrahâyanî* of Amara is thus traceable to *Agrayana* of the Vedic works; and perhaps it was the initial long vowel in the latter that might have been retained in the later form.