History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v3.c53.s3.1

v3.c53.s3.1

The construction of the fire-altar is a special rite and is the most complicated and most recondite of all Śrauta sacrifices. The Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa devotes five out of its fourteen sections (about one-third of the whole work) to *cayana* and is the leading work on that subject. Prof. Eggeling in his very learned Introduction (pp. XIV ff) to vol. 43 of the S. B. E. deals with the fundamental conceptions underlying this śrauta ritual. According to him *cayana* was originally an independent rite and was later on incorporated in the system of Soma sacrifices. At the bottom of this rite are certain cosmogonic theories. Even in the Ṛgveda we meet with the conceptions that Hiraṇyagarbha or Prajāpati (Ṛg. X. 121) is the creator of the universe, that creation, destruction and re-construction of the universe are eternal, ever-recurring processes going on from all time and will go on for all time (Ṛg. X. 190. 3, 'dhātā yathāpūrvam-akalpayat'), that Puruṣa himself became the sacrificial material (*havis*) and the year and seasons aided in the process of the reconstruction of the sacrificed and dismembered Puruṣa. Man himself who is a child of this process must also do his part in the reconstruction of the world. This he can do best by identifying Fire with Prajāpati (as in Śat. Br. X. 4. 1. 12) and regarding Fire as the Highest Divinity and the source of all life and activity and the periodic performance of sacrifice in fire as his contribution, however small it may be, to the process of re-creation and re-construction. The reconstuction of the world by Prajāpati a man can imitate by himself constructing an elaborate structure with bricks. The Śat. Br. in several places brings out these ideas, though in a somewhat esoteric way²⁶⁸⁶ (e. g. VI. 2. 2. 21). The tenth kāṇḍa (section) of the Śat. Br. is the *rahasya* (the esoteric doctrine) of cayana. Most of the acts done in the piling up of the altar are a symbolic representation of the process of re-creation and re-construction as will be seen later on. In the Śat Br. the principal authority on this doctrine of cayana is not Yājñavalkya (who is the dominating figure in the first five sections of that Brāhmaṇa) but Śāṇḍilya who traces that doctrine through a succession of teachers to Tura Kāvaṣeya who received it from Prajāpati himself (Śat. Br. IX. 5. 2. 15-16, X. 4. 1. 11, X. 6. 5. 9 &c.).