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The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c30.s20: § 20. The Piling of the Fire

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c30.s20

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§ 20. The Piling of the Fire

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The piling of the fire altar² is a rite which is regarded as being always available for performance along with the Soma sacrifice, but which is declared to be obligatory only in certain cases, including the Mahāvrata, and even that view is far from being universally prescribed. There can be no doubt that it was by no means a normal or frequent rite: its elaboration is such that no ordinary sacrificer would trouble himself with it, and it must have been only occasionally used. The main authority for it in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa is a different authority from the chief source of rules on the rest of the sacrificial ritual including the Soma sacrifice, Yājñavalkya: it is attributed to Çāṇḍilya, and others mentioned in connexion with it are Tura Kāvaṣeya,³ who performed it on the Kārotī, and Nagnajit Gāndhāra, names which have been held with some force to point to the North-West, where in conjunction with the fire cult there may have been special activity, perhaps in consequence of contact with Iran.

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² ApÇS. xvi ff.; BÇS. x; KÇS. xvi–xviii; ĀÇS. iv. 1. 21 ff.; ÇÇS. ix. 22; LÇS. i. 5. 5 ff.; Vait. xxviii f.; Weber, *Ind. Stud.* xiii. 217–92; Eggeling, SBE. xli. pp. xxvi ff.; xliii. pp. xiii ff.; Oldenberg, GN. 1917, pp. 9 ff.; Keith, *Taittirīya Saṁhitā*, i. pp. cxxv ff.

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³ Macdonell and Keith, *Vedic Index*, i. 314.

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The beginning of the sacrifice is the offering of victims, including a man: the heads are to be built into the altar and the bodies are placed in the water whence the clay for the fire-pan and the bricks of the altar are derived. The clay is solemnly collected with the aid of a horse, an ass, and a goat, a procession being formed to the place which the horse is supposed to determine, and the clay being brought formally back. Then the wife of the sacrificer makes the Aṣāḍhā brick, and the sacrificer makes the fire-pan and the three Viçvajyotis bricks. The fire-pan is kept filled with fire, from the time of the consecration, which takes place fourteen days after the animal offering, and for a year the sacrificer carries it about, and performs various rites, striding the Viṣṇu steps and adoring the fire in the pan. Then comes the actual ceremony of the building of the altar, which is made in five layers, of which the first⁴ has 1,950 and the whole together 10,800 bricks, which are given diverse names; the length of time used in the rite differs greatly: the first four layers may occupy eight months and the last four, or a few days may suffice. Noteworthy features of the building are the placing in the lowest layer of a golden figure of a man, which seems to be meant as symbolic of Agni, who is thus as it were put bodily in the altar, while a tortoise is also immured alive,¹ and addressed as a mystic being. After the altar has been erected, there are 425 libations for the Rudras, made of all sorts of wild plants. The mode of cooling the altar is also noteworthy: the Adhvaryu draws lines on the altar with a reed to which a flag, a twig of Vetaça, and an Avakā plant, all things closely connected with the waters, are tied. The formal placing of fire on the altar is carried out with much ceremony: the priest and the sacrificer step upon the altar: milk of a black cow with a white calf is offered on the last-deposited naturally perforated brick, the fire-brand is deposited on it, and special wood is used to kindle it. Then come a number of libations, for Vaiçvānara, for the forty-nine winds, which are to be as helpful to the sacrificer as they were formerly for Indra, the shower of wealth libations, 372 libations for Agni, thirteen for the names of the months, sixteen again for Agni, the Pārtha offering, one introduced by the mythical king Pṛthi Vainya ² at his royal consecration, and fourteen Vājaprasavīyas, whose remnants mixed with milk and water serve to anoint the sacrificer, who, according as he touches the altar or stands or sits, uses a black antelope-skin as a carpet, or a goat-skin, has certain wishes fulfilled. After the anointing, follow six further Pārtha oblations, twelve Rāṣṭrabhṛts, and three oblations to the winds, which are offered in the place of the horses of the chariot, and treated as if they were horses. The first pressing day of the rite is marked by the yoking of the fire before the Prātaranuvāka, and by its releasing with appropriate formulae at night. To the ordinary rites of the Soma sacrifice are added offerings to the minor deities, Anumati, Kuhū, Rākā, Sinīvālī, and for Dhātṛ at the Udayanīyā Iṣṭi, and at the very end of the final libations an offering of milk for Mitra and Varuṇa. The performer of the piling is subjected to certain taboos: he may not go out in the rain, nor eat the flesh of a bird, the altar being deemed to be of bird or human form, nor have relations with any save a wife of the same caste: after a second offering of the Agnicayana, which is permissible if the first has not good results, he may only have relations with his own wife, and after a third not even with her. In these cases the obvious meaning is that the sacrificer is to avoid wasting in any way the sacred power of the fire, which is within him, and which might be dispersed uselessly, while he must not eat the bird which is the symbol of the fire.

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⁴ In the White Yajurveda ritual there are considerable differences in detail from the rules of the Black Yajurveda, but the points are of no real consequence; cf. Weber, *Ind. Stud.* xiii. 325 ff.; Eggeling, SBE. xliii. 357 ff.

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¹ This practice may clearly be connected with the recorded discovery of toads living inside rocks, &c.

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² Macdonell and Keith, *Vedic Index*, ii. 16.

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There can be little doubt that this vast ceremonial is not a simple or primitive rite: it is a definite attempt of the priest to embody in the ritual the conception already found in the Rigveda ³ of the creation of the universe from the dismemberment of the primeval giant, which requires as its complement the process of building up the fire altar, which is a symbol of the universe, and of the cosmic sacrifice which is eternally repeated. It falls, therefore, to be considered below as an important expression of the theory of sacrifice of the Brahmans: much as there is of magic and many offerings as there are in the ritual, it is essentially in conception the embodiment of philosophic theory, a fact which explains its loose connexion with any real sacrifices.¹

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³ x. 90.

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¹ Eggeling, SBE. xliii. pp. xv ff.; Keith, *Taittirīya Saṁhitā*, i. pp. cxxv ff.

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