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The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c27.s6: § 6. Fire and Sacrifice

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c27.s6

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§ 6. Fire and Sacrifice

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The constant interrelation of magic and religion in the Vedic cult is seen in its most complete form in the position of the fire, which serves the double end of the mode in which the sacrifice is brought to the gods, and of the most effective agency for the banning of evil spirits. The Vedic hymns show clearly enough the enormous value of the fire for the driving away of the Rakṣases, and the ritual bears this out in the most marked manner. There is lighted a special fire, the Sūtikāgni, in place of the normal fire for the woman in childbirth: it is not used for any offering except for the fumigation of the newly born infant and the warming of dishes, but its object of driving off evil spirits is attested by the list of evil spirits who are banned in the ritual.⁴ The haircutting of the child is likewise performed to the west of a fire, which is not used for any offering, though utensils of the rite are put around it.⁵ The teacher initiates his pupil and girds on the sacred girdle, which marks his second birth, in the presence of a fire,⁶ but in this case the making of an offering in it shows the tendency to mingle religion and magic: the recitation goes on in the presence of a fire. Such a fire is absolutely essential, when the passages recited are of special importance and therefore holiness.⁷ The consecration of the offerer of Soma takes place before a fire; after a death, fire is used to drive away the evil powers, fire is used even in battle,⁸ the third of the holy fires of the ritual seems to have been intended from the first to drive away evil spirits: the south is the region of the Fathers and of the demons⁹ akin to them, and, when it is being used for offerings to the Fathers, a brand is taken out from it to drive away the evil spirits, which seek to have a share in the sacrifice.¹⁰

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⁴ HGS. ii. 3; *cf.* BhGS. i. 26.

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⁵ ÇGS. i. 28.

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⁶ ÇGS. ii. 7.

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⁷ ÇGS. ii. 1. 28; PB. xxi. 2. 9.

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⁸ Weber, *Ind. Stud.* xvii. 180. Brunnhofer (*Arische Urzeit*, pp. 356–61) finds Greek fire and some sort of powder in the Rigveda!

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⁹ ÇB. iv. 6. 6. 1, as the region where the sun at the winter solstice seems to be about to die; Henry, *La magie dans l'Inde antique*, p. 162, n. 1.

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¹⁰ KÇS. iv. 1. 9; VS. ii. 30.

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A further important function of the fire as used at the ritual is cathartic in a different way: at the end of the offering it is desirable to remove from possibility of human contact the apparatus of the sacrifice, which has been filled by its use at the sacrifice with a superhuman character and danger. The strew of grass, which covers the altar, is burnt, and the same mode of disposal is applied to the Svāru or chip of wood, which is used for several mystical purposes at the animal offering, the ointment used for the anointing of the piler of the fire altar, the twig with which at the new and full moon offerings the calves are driven away from the cows which are to give the milk, the spits used at the animal sacrifice for holding the pieces of the victim: the idea animating these usages, and the parallel one of burying such dangerous objects, is illustrated very clearly ¹ by the rule that the spit which has been used for the heart of the victim, the seat of life, must not be laid on the earth or water, but must be buried in secret, the burier turning away without looking back. A further kind of purification is the final bath at the end of the offering and the use of washing: the sense of cleansing and destroying is seen in the practice of letting things float away on water.

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¹ ÇB. iii. 8. 5. 9 f.; ĀpÇS. viii. 23. 10; KÇS. vi. 8. 3; Oldenberg, *Rel. des Veda*², p. 346, n. 2.

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In addition to these uses the practice observed in the burning of the omentum in the first place for the deities, in order at least in part to convey a pleasant savour, must be reckoned as a function of the fire, and further there must be borne in mind the case where the fire itself was adored: the natural way of serving the fire was, and must have been, to offer the oblations directly in it, and thus to let the god taste in actual presence the gifts of his adorers.

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These different uses of the fire suggest the process by which the practice of sacrifice among the Iranians came to be changed in the Vedic period. The evidence of Herodotos ² we have no ground to doubt, and he is quite clear that the Persians used no fire: the victim was cut up, and the flesh laid down on grass, the Magos recited over it what he calls a Theogony, and after a short time the sacrificer took away the flesh and did what he liked with it. The grass on which the victim is laid is beyond possibility of doubt the strew, Barhis, of India: the Avestan name Baresman is undoubtedly cognate, though differently formed, and the Avesta used of it the expression *fra-star*, 'spread out', which is the Vedic *stṛ*. But in the Avesta, for reasons which we do not know, the strew became a bundle of grass tied together, which is used for various purposes.³ In the Rigveda the strew is clearly often still thought of as the place to which the gods come to receive the offerings,⁴ but the fire has its essential place within the altar, ready for the burning of the offerings. Hence we meet that constant confusion noted already in the conceptions of the functions of Agni: he is bidden on the one hand to carry the offerings to the god: in the other he is to invite them to come and to sit down on the strew to partake of the offerings: the two ideas are actually found in the same hymn.¹ The character of the strew is seen also in the rule that the gifts to the gods are first deposited on it, and that anything which falls upon it is not counted as wasted² and so unfit for offering. The exact form of the process of development by which the fire came to be treated as the normal mode of the offering to the deity is uncertain: the making of a sweet odour may have been adopted, even when the gods were still supposed to come to the strew, in order perhaps to call their attention to the performance of the offering, and to attract them there; the strew and perhaps even the remains of the offering were burnt as too full of holy power to be safe to keep, or sometimes even in the case of the offerings to eat; the fire has a strong power to drive off demons, or the fire was the actual god to whom the offering was made, all reasons from which the new use could arise. But it must be remembered that it never became the sole manner of offering:³ the throwing of gifts to water deities in the waters is a natural and common use; the placing of food in pits for the dead is a very old and common usage; the offerings to Rudra and other demoniac figures may be placed in ant-heaps, a sort of natural entrance to the earth, or hung on trees, or even merely thrown in the air.⁴

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² i. 132; Strabo, xv. 3. 13, 14, p. 732. For many parallels, see von Schroeder, *Arische Religion*, ii. 314 ff., 364 ff.; cf. Herodotos, iv. 60; for Germany, Mogk, *Germ. Myth.*, p. 165.

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³ Moulton (*Early Zoroastrianism*, pp. 68, 198, 408) holds that the old Iranian practice was perverted by the non-Iranian Magoi, but this theory is most doubtful; see Keith, JRAS. 1915, pp. 790-9.

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⁴ Ovid (*Fast.* vi. 307) recognizes this as the old Latin belief; Warde Fowler, *Religious Experience of the Roman People*, p. 193. Cf. Keith, JHS. xxxvi. 109.

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¹ vii. 11. 5.

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² TS. vi. 3. 8. 3.

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³ On the Bali type of offering see especially Arbman, *Rudra*, pp. 68 ff.; for Germany, see Helm, *Altgerm. Rel.* i. 244 f., 294. Throwing in the air is appropriate for celestial deities; thus the Mongolian milk offering to the sun is thus performed, Ratzel, *Völkerkunde*, i. 649.

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⁴ KÇS. i. 1. 16; ix. 3. 7; v. 10. 13, 18; HGS. ii. 9. 5. For the practice of hanging gifts to deities of fertility on trees, cf. Cook, *Zeus*, i. 533, 592; Helm, *Altgerm. Rel.* i. 244 f. Hubert and Mauss (*Année sociol.* ii. 75, 76) ascribe to offerings by precipitation the character of the expulsion of evil.

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The Vedic ritual, however, is long past the period when the use of fire originated: the Çrauta ritual demands not one but three fires, and the time when the three were the mere expansion of the one is far behind the Rigveda: we find already there a distinction between the ordinary fire and the three fires of the more elaborate ritual.⁵ Each householder is bound by the ritual texts, if he be pious, to keep one fire and in it each day to perform the cult of the house: the rich, nobles and princes, and even men of lower status, who can afford it, maintain in the same way a set of three fires, and with them a number of priests who are essential to the carrying on of the cult. In both cases certain ceremonies may be performed, and indeed ought to be performed, the offering night and morning of the Agnihotra, the new and full moon sacrifices, and the difference in the two modes of performance is one only of elaboration. Many other kind of cereal and animal offerings are also available for performance in both ways, but the family rites proper, those deeply affecting private matters, are only allowed to be performed in the domestic fire, while on the other hand the Soma sacrifice cannot be performed without the whole of the three fires. The great sacrificer therefore has the three fires beside the domestic fire: the older position that on great occasions the domestic fire was divided into three is suggested quite irresistibly by the name of the one of the three fires, which occurs in the Rigveda, the Gārhapatya, which means clearly the fire of the householder, and must have derived its name from the domestic fire, but it had disappeared before the tradition begins. It is a natural conjecture that it was in the Soma ritual that the origin of the fires developed, but it is not capable of proof.¹ Nor is there any evidence at all that the three fires represent an amalgamation of different forms of fire worship.² The number suggests such a conclusion, but the mere fact of the number is of course not sufficient evidence and of other proof none is forthcoming.

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⁵ Ludwig, *Rigveda*, iii. 355; Oldenberg, *SBE.* xxx. p. x, n. 1.

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¹ Oldenberg, *Rel. des Veda*², p. 349, n. 3; Knauer, *Festgruss an Roth*, p. 64.

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² Ludwig, *Rigveda*, iii. 356. Three is a sacred number, because of its being the first expression of plurality and indivisible, and the mere growth in elaboration may have produced the three; cf. Meyer, *Gesch. d. Alt.*³ II. i. p. 588.

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Of the three fires the Gārhapatya alone was continually maintained: the other fires, the Āhavanīya and the Dakṣiṇa, were derived from it, and the leading forward of the fire is already referred to in the Rigveda, though it is not possible to prove that the process was identical with that applied in the ritual.³ The central position of the Gārhapatya is also to be seen in its relation to the man who goes on a journey: he takes formal leave of it first and then of the Āhavanīya, on his return he as solemnly greets first the Āhavanīya, and then the Gārhapatya.⁴ The Āhavanīya, with which Hillebrandt seeks to identify the Vaiçvānara of the Rigveda, is the fire for the offering, not that, as a Brāhmaṇa says, in which the cooking is done, but that in which the cooked food is made over to the gods: the Gārhapatya therefore serves to cook the food and to warm the dishes, an act which seems clearly both in its nature for which no practical purpose is seen, and through the assertion that thus the demons are destroyed, to have been a piece of magic.⁵ But the relations of the two fires are not in practice so simple as this: there are cases in which the functions are inverted.⁶ The third fire is the Dakṣiṇāgni, also called the Anvāhāryapacana because the sacrificial fee for the new and full moon sacrifices, which was called Anvāhārya, was cooked on it. This fire was probably in its origin, as shown by its place at the south, intended to drive away by its flames the evil spirits and the souls of the dead, but it was natural that it should serve also for offerings to such spirits, though in the case of the Fathers pits were also used. We are expressly told that the fire served to avert danger from the Fathers,⁷ and in the rite of the royal consecration a brand is taken out of this fire, and used as the place for an offering to drive away evil spirits, and in the same rite another fire-brand is taken out and an offering made on it to Nirṛti.⁸ The Dakṣiṇāgni is also used both at the monthly offerings to the Fathers, and at the annual offering connected with the Sākamedhas, the third of the four-month sacrifices of the Çrauta ritual.¹

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³ Hillebrandt, *Ved. Myth.* ii. 97 ff.

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⁴ ÇB. ii. 4. 1. 3.

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⁵ ÇB. i. 7. 3. 27; iii. 8. 1. 7; Weber, *Ind. Stud.* x. 327, n. 5.

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⁶ ÇB. i. 7. 3. 26 ff.; KÇS. i. 8. 34, 35, &c.

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⁷ ÇB. ii. 3. 2. 6; ÇÇS. ii. 14. 3; 15. 4.

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⁸ ÇB. v. 2. 4. 15; 3. 2.

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¹ KÇS. iv. 1. 2; v. 8. 6.

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The rules for the steps to be taken to set up the three fires or the householder's single fire are many and minute, but of little general importance: it is precisely in minutiae that the genius of the Brahmans shows itself to its complete extent, but, as in the case of the Roman priesthood, without gain to religious conceptions. The two normal methods are the old-fashioned one of producing the fire from the fire sticks, a process which is of immemorial antiquity in India,² and the obtaining of the fire from the fire maintained by a great sacrificer or wealthy master of cattle, the chief kind of Vedic wealth: in the first case the fire is new and pure, in the second it bears with it the associations of ceremony or of wealth or both. In the case of the household fire it is often preferred to take it from the last fire tended by the householder as a Brahman student, thus doubtless preserving the continuity of his holiness, or in the alternative from the fire with which his marriage ceremonies were performed, and which therefore is a suitable fire for the continuance of the rites arising from his married state. But in the case of the four-month offerings, and the Soma sacrifice as at the animal offering, it is the practice to produce by friction a new fire and unite it with the Āhavanīya, in order doubtless to refresh it and make it strong. In this usage may be seen the remnant of an idea, that the fire grows from time to time tired, and should annually be refreshed by being superseded by a new fire. The evidence for such a belief being really held in any strong way in the Vedic period is, however, very weak: Hillebrandt's³ suggestions that once a year the fire was normally relit rests on combinations which are without any value. The chief occasion recognized by the ritual for the setting up of new fires was when it was found that the existing fires were not bringing good fortune to the offerer. For this occasion the rite of re-establishment, Punarādheya, was prescribed.

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² Frazer, *The Magic Art*, ii. 248; Cook (*Zeus*, i. 325 ff.) traces to this the Prometheus myth, comparing *pramantha* with Zeus Pramantheus of Thourioi, but this is not plausible; for Prometheus cf. Keith, JRAS. 1916, pp. 553 ff.

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³ *Ved. Myth.* ii. 77 ff.

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