Vedic Index of Names and Subjects v1.c3.s6.76

v1.c3.s6.76

Apart from all these priests was the Purohita, who was the spiritual adviser of the king in all his religious duties. Geldner⁷ holds that, as a rule, when the Purohita actually took part in one of the great sacrifices he played the part of the Brahman, in the sense of the priest who superintended the whole conduct of the ritual. He sees evidence for this view in a considerable number of passages of the Rigveda⁸ and the later literature,⁹ where Purohita and Brahman were combined or identified. Oldenberg,¹⁰ however, more correctly points out that in the earlier period this was not the case: the Purohita was then normally the Hotṛ, the singer of the most important of the songs; it was only later that the Brahman, who in the capacity of overseer of the rite is not known to the Rigveda, acquired the function of general supervision hitherto exercised by the Purohita, who was *ex officio* skilled in the use of magic and in guarding the king by spells which could also be applied to guarding the sacrifice from evil demons. With this agrees the fact that Agni, pre-eminently¹¹ the Purohita of men, is also a Hotṛ, and that the two divine Hotṛs of the Āprī hymns are called¹² the divine Purohitas. On the other hand, the rule is explicitly recognized in the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa¹³ that a Kṣatriya should have a Brahman as a Purohita; and in the Taittirīya Saṃhitā¹⁴ the Vasiṣṭha family have a special claim to the office of Brahman-Purohita, perhaps an indication that it was they who first as Purohitas exchanged the function of Hotṛs for that of Brahmans in the sacrificial ritual.