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The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c28.s4: § 4. The Forms of Prayer

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c28.s4

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§ 4. The Forms of Prayer

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The Rigveda shows quite clearly that the conception of prayer for aid to a god without the performance of any sacrifice was quite natural and intelligible. The heroes of its narratives of the deeds of the Açvins in special seem to have been specially eager in their prayers for the aid they desired. But the priests were, from the earliest period of the later Saṁhitās and probably earlier, ready to find the exact formulae with which the deity should be addressed in every stage of trouble, and, what was still more important, to lay down the nature of the necessary offering. Hence we find even in the Taittirīya Saṁhitā⁵ an elaborate account of the different offerings to be made to the gods for a vast variety of cases of special desires: the verses used by the priests for the Anuvākyās and Yājyās are taken from the Rigveda, many however in a very far from natural way, showing that the only interest of the composers of these lists of offerings was to find some verse, which by connexion of sound or sense might be thought appropriate. On the other hand the ritual still here and there allows the offering of prayers which were not immediately dictated by the necessity of accompanying libations: thus in the Agniṣṭoma the morning litany, the Prātaranuvāka with its address to Agni, to the Dawn, and to the Açvins is independent of any actual libations. In the domestic⁶ ritual the rule is laid down that the student is to perform the devotion to the twilight, both night and morning in the wood: after the twilight is over, he has to repeat the three sacred words Bhūḥ, Bhuvaḥ, and Svar, and the Sāvitrī verse: the sacred words denote, the first earth, the third heaven, but the intermediate expression has no obvious relation to the intermediate space, save in so far as it may be a compound, as suggested by Oldenberg,⁷ of the two elements of the first and third words. In another form of ritual the prayer is connected not with a libation, but with a ceremonial reverence to the fire, the Upasthāna, where by the mention of his devotion to the fire the votary intends, in the naïve conception of the Brāhmaṇas, to call the attention of the god to the fact of his existence and doubtless also of his needs.¹

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⁵ ii. 1. 1 ff. There is a considerable similarity in many of the magic rites of the Kauçika Sūtra as is pointed out by Caland (*Altindisches Zauberritual*, p. viii).

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⁶ ÇGS. ii. 9.

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⁷ *Rel. des Veda*², p. 431, n. 4.

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¹ ÇB. ii. 3. 4. 7.

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In the main the rule is observed that the prayers, which celebrate the actions of the gods and invoke their aid, are in verse, while the prose is restricted to the formulae, which accompany each act of the sacrifice and in special each offering as it is made. But there are here and there prose prayers spoken by the Adhvaryu, as at the new- and full-moon offering and at the horse sacrifice. But, whatever the type of the prayer, the result is the same: the priest prays that the sacrificer—who may of course be himself—shall have long life, riches, especially in cattle and horses, in chariots and gold, sons in abundance, freedom from disease, success over his enemy, and prosperity in general; he also prays that his enemies may be brought to ruin.² It is undeniable that the prayers are nearly always for material objects, and that the occasional expressions of desire for spiritual goods are in the extreme exceptional: here and there we find admissions of sin and desire to be at friendship with the gods, especially Varuṇa, but that there is much ethical content in the hymns generally it would be absurd to assert. The real object of the hymn is to please the god by the references to his past deeds and his power, and thus induce him to manifest again the strength of his right arm for the benefit of his servants. The hymns often remind the god of their ancestral connexion, and in the pride of their production and of the value which the gods must attach to them are extremely naïve. It is wholly impossible to doubt that, if the Adhvaryu really thought that the acts of the sacrifice and the actual offerings were what mattered, his view was not in the least shared by the Hotṛ, who was of opinion that his perfectly constructed hymns would give the god the greatest possible amount of pleasure. It is a question of interest, but one which cannot be answered, how it came about that this love of poetry died out, after it must have flourished for some centuries. The Brāhmaṇa period is clearly a time when the priests are content in the main to use the traditional poetry, and, if they composed, to base their compositions very closely on the traditional models. The pride of the Vedic poets in their own powers is perfectly evidenced, when they claim that their hymns strengthen Indra for the slaying of Vṛtra or that through the prayers the steeds are yoked to the chariot of the god. Here as everywhere the tendency of the sacrifice to pass into magic is illustrated: the prayer which is really essentially free from magic is at last turned by the pride of its composers into nothing but a spell.

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² The theory that the spell precedes prayer, which is widely held (Meyer, *Gesch. d. Alt.*³ I. ii. pp. 870, 871; Usener, *Archiv f. Religionswissenschaft*, vii. 15 ff.; Feist, *Kultur der Indogermanen*, pp. 349 ff.; cf. Farnell, *Evolution of Religion*, pp. 163 ff.), stands or falls with the view that magic precedes religion. On the view here taken that they are independent, prayer is not originally a spell; cf. Bloomfield, *Religion of the Veda*, pp. 205 ff.; Jevons, *Idea of God*, pp. 108 ff.; Heiler, *Das Gebet* (1921).

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The Brāhmaṇas and the ritual¹ give advice to the priest how to make use of the service for ends not openly expressed. If the ritual contain in a liturgy the word 'possessing heroic sons', he has but to think of the wife of the sacrificer, and he will bring it about that she has a strong son: the word 'embryo' if thought on will bring her fertility. But, on the other hand, the power can be used for evil as effectively: if the priest but think of the enemy whom he hates, when he takes up the pressing stone in his hand, he can overthrow the enemy: the pressing stone thus becomes a weapon to slay him.² Of these puerilities the Brāhmaṇas are never tired,³ and this attitude of mind must be accepted as a fundamental fact of their mental outlook.

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¹ ÇB. iii. 9. 4. 17; ÇÇS. iv. 8. 4. 3; v. 9. 19; 14. 12, &c. The highest pitch of absurdity is perhaps reached in the narrative how by the error in placing an accent a foe of Indra ruined himself and not Indra; Keith, *Taittirīya Saṁhitā*, i. p. 185; TS. ii. 5. 2. 1; ÇB. i. 6. 3. 10.

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² ÇB. iii. 9. 4. 17; cf. PB. ii. 13. 2; vi. 5. 18; 6. 2; MS. i. 4. 12; 6. 3; ii. 5. 8; iii. 1. 9, &c.; AB. iii. 3. 2 ff.; 6. 1 ff.

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³ TS. vi. 4. 4. 3 (device to secure women’s love); MS. iv. 5. 7; ÇB. i. 4. 3. 11 ff.

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