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The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c30.s18: § 18. The Sattras or Sacrificial Sessions

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c30.s18

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§ 18. The Sattras or Sacrificial Sessions

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The rite of twelve days, Dvādaçāha,³ may be performed either as an Ahīna or a Sattra, and all rites with more than twelve pressing days are Sattras: the number of years they may be continued extends to thirty-six or more up to 1,000. The Sattras all differ from other forms of the Soma sacrifice, because all the performers must be consecrated and must be Brahmans: there is therefore no separate sacrificer: all share in the benefits of the offering: each bears the burden of his own errors, whereas at the ordinary sacrifice the sacrificer receives the benefit and the evil results of errors alike. Moreover, they should usually be Brahmans who perform the same kinds of rites, and have the same deity, Tanūnapāt or Narāçaṅsa, at the Āprī invocation; if not, the deity of the majority is adopted. During the Sattra all other sacrifices cease to be performed by the priests taking part in the rite: any sexual intercourse is forbidden, as are swift movements, laughing without holding the hand before the mouth, untruth, connexions with non-Aryans, and so forth. One of them plays the part of sacrificer: the others hold on to him when he does those acts which only one man can perform. The Adhvaryu consecrates the sacrificer, and so on until a student consecrates the Unnetṛ. The wives of the priests are also consecrated each with her husband. There are no fees: instead the priests go south saying as they shake black skins, ‘What here from my life departeth, that, O Agada, I bring to thee as a fee,’ evidently a device to secure long life. The aims of the Sattras are most various: the obtaining of wealth, of cattle, of offspring, of prosperous marriage, and many other things. Much as they are, it is clear, elaborated by the priest, they reflect here and there primitive conceptions of sacrifice.

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³ ApÇS. xxi; BÇS. xvi; KÇS. i. 6. 13; xii; ĀÇS. x. 5; ÇÇS. x-xii; LÇS. x. 1. 11 ff.; Vait. xlii. 14 ff., Hillebrandt, *Rituallitteratur*, pp. 153–6; Keith, *Rig-Veda Brāhmaṇas*, pp. 55 ff.

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The model of all Sattras is the Dvādaçāha, which is made up of a Prāyaṇīya and an Udayanīya, which, as in all Sattras as opposed to Ahīnas, must both be Atirātra days, as the beginning and concluding rites respectively of a Pṛṣṭhya Ṣaḍaha, and of either 4 Chandomas or 3 Chandomas and an Avivākya day as the tenth. The name Pṛṣṭhya is based on the different treatment of the Pṛṣṭha Stotra of each day corresponding to the Çastra of the Hotṛ: on the first it is in the Rathantara tune, on the second the Bṛhat, the third the Vairūpa, the fourth the Vairāja, the fifth the Çākvara, the sixth the Raivata. Of these days the first and fourth are Agniṣṭomas, the others Ukthyas. The Chandomas are Ukthyas, the tenth is an Atyagniṣṭoma: it is called Avivākya, because on that day no dispute about errors in the ceremony is allowed.¹ A further variation is possible: on the fourth and ninth days the Āgrayaṇa cup may be drawn first, on the six and seventh the Çukra, in which case the Stotras and the Çastras must also be transposed, or they may be transposed without change in the order of the cups: this makes the period of ten days bear the term *vyūḍhachandas*. The Soma is daily watched by one priest, the rest may study the Veda, fetch wood, and eat. The tenth day is marked by interesting rites, the singing of the Sāman called the success of the Sattra, and the performance of a Brahmodya like that at the horse offering or regarding the unqualified Prajāpati.

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¹ Cf. Eggeling, SBE. xli. p. xvii; Keith, *Rig-Veda Brāhmaṇas*, p. 247.

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Rules are given for building up the Dvādaçāha to longer Sattras; the simplest addition is that of a Mahāvrata day after the period of ten days: other additions are inserted before that period, the shorter before the longer. But these rules are very much varied in practice. Of the various forms by far the most interesting is the Gavām Ayana, ‘the way of the cows’, which is a Sattra of one year’s duration.

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The beginning of this Sattra ² is variously prescribed, at the full moon of Phālguna or Caitra, or four days before the full moon of these months or of Māgha. The middle day, the Viṣuvant, divides it into two halves, of which the latter is in many respects intended to be the reverse of the former. The scheme of the offering is a Prāyaṇīya Atirātra, a Caturviñça day on which the twenty-four-fold Stoma is used, the form being either an Agniṣṭoma or an Ukthya; five months each of four Abhiplava Ṣaḍahas and one Pṛṣṭhya; a sixth one of one Pṛṣṭhya, three Abhiplavas, one Abhijit, an Agniṣṭoma rite, and three Svarasāman days making up 28, to which the first two days are added to complete the month. Then comes the Viṣuvant. The second half-year has as the seventh month three Svarasāmans, one Viçvajit, one Pṛṣṭhya, and three Abhiplavas; then months 8 to 11 have one Pṛṣṭhya and four Abhiplavas each, and the last has three Abhiplavas, one Āyus day, one Go day, one Daçarātra, and the Mahāvrata and Udayanīya days.

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² ApÇS. xxii, xxiii; BÇS. xvi; KÇS. xiii; xxiv. 4, 5; ĀÇS. xi. 7; xii; ÇÇS. xiii. 19; LÇS. iii. 5–iv. 5; Vait. xxxi. 6–34; Eggeling, SBE. xliv. 140 ff.

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The Abhiplava Ṣaḍaha, which is often used in Sattras of all kinds and also in Ahīnas, differs in certain respects from the Pṛṣṭhya. In the first place in it the Pṛṣṭha Stotra is alternatively Rathantara and Bṛhat only. In the second place the days of the Abhiplava are differentiated as Jyotis, Go, and Āyus according to the Stomas used for the different Stotras. The Jyotis form, which is an Agniṣṭoma, having twelve Stotras only, employs for 1–6 the Pañcadaça, for 7–11 the Saptadaça, and for 12 the Ekaviṅça. The other two are Ukthyas and have fifteen Stotras: for 1 the Go uses the Pañcadaça, for 2–5 the Trivṛt, for 6–10 the Saptadaça, for 11–15 the Ekaviṅça. The Āyus has for 1 Trivṛt, for 2–5 Pañcadaça, for 6–10 Saptadaça, and 11–15 Ekaviṅça.

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At the Viṣuvant the sun is honoured with offerings, but the Mahāvrata¹ is much more fully known to us. The rite is according to the ritual allowed to be performed variously as a one-day rite, an Ahīna, or in a Sattra, and the latter is its natural place. It is clearly an old festival of the winter solstice, and not even originally, as Hillebrandt holds, of the summer solstice, when the strengthening of the sun was an essential duty. There is beaten an earth drum, doubtless to scare away the demons who might attempt to overthrow the power of the sun; the Hotṛ sits on a swing and is swung to and fro, to represent the path of the sun in the sky, and strengthen its power to perform it; ritual abuse is exchanged for fertility purposes, between a student or, in a later usage, a Māgadha, and a hetaira; there is actually carried out sexual intercourse; the consecrated persons are alternately praised and reviled; there is a mimic fight between an Aryan and a Çūdra for the possession of a white round skin which is declared to be a symbol of the sun;² the skin of an unfruitful cow is hung up or stretched out and warriors pierce through it with arrows, perhaps as a rain spell.³ Women celebrate to the sound of the lute in the south the patrons of the ceremony: maids dance round the fire with water pitchers, while the Stotra is being performed: they pour the water on the fire, and their song shows that they desire richness in milk with water for the cows. The desire of heat and rain seems clearly united: the position of the sun nearest earth is indicated by the priest, who touches the board of the swing and the earth with one hand, and says, ‘The God hath united with the goddess’.¹

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¹ Hillebrandt, *Sonnwendfeste* (*Roman. Forsch.* v. 299 ff.); Keith, *Çāṅkhāyana Āraṇyaka*, pp. 79 ff.; Eggeling, *SBE.* xliii. pp. xxv ff.; Max Müller, *SBE.* i. pp. xcii ff.; von Schroeder, *Arische Religion*, ii. 137 ff., 210 f., 243 f., 317 ff., 599, 631 ff., adducing parallels. See TS. vii. 5. 9 f.; KS. xxxiv. 5; PB. vi. 5. 13–21; 6. 11–15; JB. ii. 404–10, which negatives performance on the Viṣuvant.

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² Keith, *Taittirīya Saṁhitā*, i. p. cxxxi. For ritual swinging see Frazer, *The Dying God*, pp. 277–85; Warde Fowler, *Religious Experience of the Roman People*, pp. 61–7.

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³ Brunnhofer (*Arische Urzeit*, p. 304) interprets RV. viii. 20. 8 as the shooting of arrows by the Sobharis against the Maruts’ car to bring down the honeydew, and cites the practice of the Mapongas to shoot arrows to bring down rain. The skin may represent the clouds, as the Aegis brings the thunderstorm (*Il.* xvii. 593 ff.; *Aen.* viii. 352 ff.).

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¹ This is clearly the wedding of sun and earth, a form of that of sky and earth; cf. Brunnhofer, *Arische Urzeit*, pp. 325–7; Cook, *Zeus*, i. 526 ff., 604, 672, 709, 733.

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From the point of view of the priest, most important elements of the Mahāvrata are the Mahāvrata Stotra or the Pṛṣṭha Stotra, corresponding to the Mahaduktha of the Hotṛ: it is noteworthy for the fact that it is intended to reproduce the form of the fire, the five Sāmans, the Gāyatra, Rathantara, Bṛhat, Bhadra, and Rājana, are equated to the head, right and left wing, tail and body, and accompanied by the Stomas from Trivṛt to Pañcaviṅça in order. The later ritual of the Çāṅkhāyana Çrauta Sūtra identifies the Stotra with the body of a man, showing the influence of the mystic speculations of the priests who performed the Agnicayana, ‘piling of the fire’, and who saw in this act the making up of the universal father, the creator god Prajāpati, identified with the primeval giant who in the Puruṣasūkta is conceived as having, when sacrificed, provided the material for the whole world.²

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² Other Ayanas (e. g. Utsarginām Ayana, JB. iii. 393–7; TS. vii. 5. 6 f.; KS. xxx. 7; PB. v. 10) are given in the Brāhmaṇas and Sūtras.

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Of other Sattras an interesting one is that performed on the Dṛṣadvatī,³ a specially sacred river, and still more that on the Sarasvatī, which is marked by many special rites. The sacrifice is performed as the sacrificer moves along the bank from the place where the Sarasvatī disappears in the desert, across the confluence with the Dṛṣadvatī, at the crossing of which an offering is made to Apāṁ Napāt, to the place where the stream arises, the Plakṣa Prāsravaṇa,⁴ where an offering is made to Agni as Kāma, ‘desire’. The sacrifice is accompanied by the driving of a hundred young calves along with a bull into the wood, and is terminated when these have reached the number of a thousand, or the sacrificer dies, or the cows disappear. At the end of the whole sacrifice, a mare and a woman are given as a present to the worthiest of those who have taken part in the performance. The final bath is taken at Kāravapacava on the Yamunā. This and the Dṛṣadvatī offering are important for the fact that they mention several places of the Kuru land, such as Parīṇaḥ,⁵ and indicate the boundaries of that country, the chief home of Brahmanism.

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³ PB. xxv. 13. 1 ff.; LÇS. x. 18. 12 ff.; KÇS. xxiv. 6. 32 ff.; ÇÇS. xiii. 29. 27 ff.

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⁴ See Macdonell and Keith, *Vedic Index*, ii. 65.

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⁵ *Ibid.* i. 170; JB. ii. 300.

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