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The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c28.s2: § 2. The Avabhṛtha

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c28.s2

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§ 2. The Avabhṛtha

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As the Dīkṣā is the beginning of the Soma sacrifice, so the end of it and also of many other offerings is the Avabhṛtha, or 'concluding bath'.² The word is found already in the Rigveda,³ and undoubtedly in the original sense, and the practice must therefore be assumed to have existed from the earliest period of the Vedic religion. The meaning of it is clear: it is the carrying down to the waters of the various things which are to be disposed of after the offering is over. The ceremony at the end of the Soma sacrifice is simple: the skins of antelope hide and the girdles, which the sacrificer and his wife have been wearing throughout the rite, are taken off, and cast into the water along with the utensils which have come into contact with the Soma and with the pressed shoots of the Soma plant. Then the two go into the water and rub the backs of each other: then they come out from the water, and thereupon put on fresh garments. The performance is made into a sacrifice by the fact that offerings are made and verses addressed to Varuṇa, claiming him as the possessor of many healing powers, imploring him to drive away hate, and to pardon sin. The bath itself is addressed as the cause of the removal of sin. But these forms are obviously mere cloaks for the fact that the washing is the chief thing, and that it concerns itself with the removal of the mysterious potency, which has clung since the Dīkṣā to the sacrificer and his wife, rendering them unfit for normal human life. That this was realized by the priest is clearly proved by the language used of the rite:⁴ the waters are distinctly said to remove the consecration and the Tapas, and it is stated that the sacrificer takes the consecration with him into the bath. The meaning is illustrated by the parallel procedure in the case of the undertaking of a vow of study by a Brahman. He then assumes a girdle, an antelope skin, and a staff, and at the end of the vow all these things are solemnly laid aside, and he takes a bath.⁵

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² Oldenberg, *Rel. des Veda*², pp. 407–10; ĀpÇS. viii. 7. 12 ff.; xiii. 19 ff.; KÇS. vi. 10. 1; x. 8. 16 ff.; Hubert and Mauss (*Année sociol.* ii. 86 ff.) give Hebrew and Greek parallels and compare the concluding service of the Mass.

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³ viii. 93. 23.

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⁴ MS. iii. 6. 2; ĀpÇS. xiii. 21. 3.

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⁵ HGS. i. 7. 8; 9. 8–10.

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The nature of the bath is further elucidated by the fact that through the performance of ablutions in it the waters become charged with magic potency and power: thus at the end of the bath at the horse sacrifice, those who go in, though evil doers, are released from all their sins.¹ The bath too serves as the mode of driving out evil in a curious rite, which is recorded of the same sacrifice:² a man is driven into the water up to his mouth, and on his head offerings are made to Jumbaka, to death, and to the slaying of an embryo: the man is of an ugly appearance, and is said in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa to be the symbol of Varuṇa. It is clear from the notice of a Sūtra that the real meaning of the ceremony, which ends with the man being driven away, is that he is a scapegoat, who bears with him the sins of the community, but who is also purified from them in some measure by the driving into the water. The offering on his head may well be derived from the mere mode of transferring³ the sin by touching him on such a part as the head, or merely be based on the fact that an offering to Varuṇa was an essential part of the rite for the priest, and that the obvious place to make it was in the man who had the sins of the people upon him. That a human sacrifice is meant, as was imagined by Weber,⁴ who thought that the potency of the bath to remit sin was due to this, is obviously wrong: there is no trace in any of the texts of the death of the man, who is on the contrary clearly driven away⁵ as an essential part of the rite.

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¹ Above, Part III, Chap. 18, § 2; KÇS. xx. 8. 17, 18.

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² ÇB. xiii. 3. 6. 5; TB. iii. 9. 15.

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³ So in the ancient Hebrew rite of consecrating a thing the touching by the people was the essential element; Wellhausen, *Archiv f. Religionswissenschaft*, vii. 33–39.

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⁴ See Eggeling, SBE. xliv. p. xl.

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⁵ ÇÇS. xvi. 18. 20; the expulsion was not in all likelihood permanent, though Eggeling thinks he may have been expected to live an anchorite's life. But he had been bought to perform the rite for 1,000 cows: so, if he went away, he would probably not trouble about asceticism.

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