The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c9.19

c9.19

All this may seem quite remote from the nāstika. Nevertheless, it is here, in the agonistic conception of sacrifice and especially in the verbal contest, that we may find his origin. We have to turn first to a particular form of the verbal contest: the reviling of sacrifice and its mythical representative, Prajāpati. This reviling takes place at the *mahāvrata* Soma festival at the end of the year-long sacrifice. This festival, otherwise a normal Soma sacrifice, is marked by the insertion of a number of contests in the midday service of the Soma liturgy: a chariot race, an arrow shooting, a tug of war (or wrestling match) between an ārya and a śūdra for a hide representing the sun, the exchange of verbal obscenities between a man and a woman who later copulate. It preserves, in other words, the elements of an orgiastic festival. In this context the *Pañcaviṃśa Brāhmaṇa* places the action of a "praiser" (*abhigara*), who eulogizes the participants, and a "reviler" (*apagara*), who blames them.²⁴