The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c28.s1.12

v1.c28.s1.12

There is, however, another element in the rite, which is emphasized by the Brāhmaṇas, but denied as primitive by Oldenberg. It is that the performance is a new birth, that the performer is reduced to the condition of an embryo, and the use of milk, the stammering speech, the clenched fist, are thus explained. There can be really no doubt that the ceremony was meant by the Brahmans to convey and to have this effect, and the result of the consecration in the case of one who was not a Brahman, was to convert him into a Brahman, not of course permanently, but for the time being. The Rigveda¹ is one place seems perfectly clearly to allude to the rite as making the performers born, that is newly born again,² and while we may, if we like, say that the older idea was merely that of the production of religious ecstasy, still we have no right to deny that the rite was as early as the period of the Rigveda carefully remodelled so as to suit the idea intended to be seen in it by the Brahmans. An explanation of the stammering speech is offered by Oldenberg as indicating the moment when the ecstasy seizes on the offerer, but, though this may be paralleled with the broken utterances of the priestess of Delphi and elsewhere, the other interpretation deserves preference.³