The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c27.s3.4

v1.c27.s3.4

On the other hand, the element of magic enters very largely into the ceremony of the Varuṇapraghāsas,¹ the second of the four-month offerings. On the first day of the offering barley is roasted on the Dakṣiṇa fire, the one used for all ritual acts of an uncanny description: then a number of dishes of a porridge made from the barley are prepared, one for each member of the family with one over, apparently for the members yet unborn. The wife of the sacrificer is then asked by the priest what lovers she has; she must name them, or at least indicate the number by holding up as many stalks of grass as she has lovers, and by this action she purifies herself from her sins in this regard: otherwise, if she does not tell the truth, it will go badly for her connexions. She is then taken to the southern fire, in which she offers the plates with the words, ‘Whatever sin we have committed in the village, in the forest, among men and in ourselves, that by sacrifice we remove here,’ and further on an offering is made to Varuṇa, who is asked to spare the lives of his suppliants, and not to be wroth. The nature of the sacrifice is evidently in the main magical: the offering to Varuṇa and the consciousness of sin are there, but it may be legitimately be said that the essential part of the rite is the expulsion of sins by means of the magic rite, though due note must be taken that, as preserved to us, the other ethical element comes in. The burning of the dishes is of course essential, as they are laden with the sin: it may be compared with the purification by water of the scapegoat in the horse sacrifice, to which reference has been made above. In the course of the Soma sacrifice² the priests throw into the fire splinters of the wood of the sacrificial post, charging them with the removal of the sin wrought by the gods, the Fathers, man, and themselves. In the Sautrāmaṇī³ offering a vessel filled with a special preparation is allowed to float away with the sins of those concerned. In the case in which a younger brother commits the crime of marrying before the elder,⁴ the sins of both in the form of fetters are thrown into the foam of the water, and thus allowed to vanish. The washing of the mouth removes the sin of untruth for three years⁵—the mystic three or the unit one⁶ are most common in these statements of time—and the evil brought by an ill-omened bird can be washed away and removed by the carrying round of fire.⁷ In the same way are used plants,⁸ the Apāmārga plant seems to owe its very name to its uses in such rites, amulets,⁹ and spells.¹⁰ On the other hand, the intervention of the gods is constantly mentioned: Agni Vaiçvānara, Agni Gārhapatya, Savitṛ, Pūṣan, the Maruts, Viçvakarman, the All-gods are invoked to remove the evil.¹¹ The evil in fact is treated precisely like a disease, and is to be dealt with in just the same way. Moreover, as is natural, the concept of evil is of the widest possible kind: every sort of error in the sacrifice, every sort of out-of-the-way occurrence in the life of the home and the herds, such as the birth of twins, every sort of strange occurrence in ordinary nature, is made the cause for such an offering, and the Brāhmaṇas and still more the Sūtras pile up long lists of offerings under the rubric Prāyaçcitta,¹ a term which is not yet found in the Rigveda. The taste for such inventions is clearly one which grew with the development of the priestly system, and must from the constant number of such Prāyaçcittas, and the gifts to the priest which were enjoined as an essential part, have counted for much in the life of the priesthood. For religious purposes they are of little interest, since they consist in the main of offerings overlaid with magic practices of the most simple and obvious kind.