The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c9.16

c9.16

The original meaning still seems to be present in the ritual of the last day of the ten-day period at the end of the year-long sacrificial session. At the conclusion of this day, a brahmodya is prescribed.²¹ Originally, of course, this was a battle of wits, and the simple rule that a brahmodya contest was to be held on this day at the end of the year was sufficient. In the classical ritual, however, this had to be fixed in form and content. One of the solutions was to have the participants sit around their leader, the *gṛhapati*, and each in his turn ask him fixed questions with regard to the Ten, Four, Five, Six and Seven Hotṛs (*daśahotāraḥ*, *caturhotāraḥ*, *pañcahotāraḥ*, *ṣaḍḍhotāraḥ* and *saptahotāraḥ*): "When the Ten Hotṛs held a sacrificial session, by which gṛhapati did they succeed?" Answer of the gṛhapati: "By Prajāpati as gṛhapati they succeeded, through him they created offspring," etc. Here we see the caturhotṛ formulas in the form of a dialogue instead of the classical single identificatory formula. The point actually at stake seems to be not so much identifying the gṛhapati of the different groups of mythical Hotṛs as establishing the relation of the one gṛhapati and the multiple (Ten, Four, Five, Six, Seven) Hotṛs—the crucial relation that brings about the cosmogonical result. Finally, we can observe here that the crucial relation is, as it were, acted out by the participants, the Hotṛs, on the one hand, and the gṛhapati (who names each time his mythical counterpart) on the other.²²