Pramāṇa · Search · About · API

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c30.s3: § 3. The Fire-God Oblation or Agnihotra

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c30.s3

Language
English

§ 3. The Fire-God Oblation or Agnihotra

v2.c30.s3.1

It is the duty of the man who has established his fires, as of the man who has no fires, to offer daily, morning and evening, the Agnihotra :² the precise time of offering, whether just before or just after the rising of the sun in the morning, and whether after sunset or after the appearance of the first star in the evening, is a subject of much discussion in the Brāhmaṇas and Sūtras. If the fires were kept perpetually alight, then they required only to be brightened up for each occasion : if not, then the fire must be taken from the Gārhapatya, either only every evening, it being used also for the morning, or each time : the Dakṣiṇa might be kept perpetually alight, or taken out daily, or only on the new- and full-moon days, on which according to some authorities the sacrificer must himself perform the ritual. The main offering was milk, milked by an Aryan into a pail made by an Aryan : the milk was heated and mixed with water on the Gārhapatya, and offered in the Āhavanīya and Gārhapatya. At the end the sacrificer eats and offers four water libations to the gods, the Fathers, the seven seers, and Agni on the earth, or to other deities also. The Dakṣiṇa fire received no special honour.

v2.c30.s3.2

² ĀpÇS. vi; BÇS. iii. 4–9; MÇS. i. 6; KÇS. iv. 12–15; ĀÇS. ii. 2–5; ÇÇS. iii. 7–12; Vait. vii.

v2.c30.s3.3

With the Agnihotra might be performed the ceremony of homage to the fires, Agnyupasthāna, usually carried out at the night service only. The Āhavanīya is honoured first, then the cow from which the milk was taken, then the Gārhapatya, and then the cow, or its calf might be substituted for the cow. At the end the sacrificer names the name of his dear son who is to succeed him in the duty. The same close connexion of the offering and the home is seen in the fact that, on going on a journey, the householder takes leave of the fires, and on return approaches them with wood and words of welcome. If he goes away from the old house for good, he offers a libation to Vāstoṣpati, the lord of the abode, while his cart has one horse, the right-hand one, spanned, and the other not yoked. The obligation to offer the Agnihotra ends only when one becomes a wandering mendicant.

v2.c30.s3.4

There can be little doubt that even as early as the Rigveda there was present the idea that the Agnihotra, with its brightening up of the fires, was a spell to aid the rising of the sun, a view which was doubtless the ground of the opinion of those who pressed for the performance of the ceremony before sunrise.³

v2.c30.s3.5

³ Weber, *Ind. Stud.* x. 329. Cf. the worship of Hestia in Greece and Vesta in Rome, and the holy fire of the Lithuanian tradition, as well as the still greater development of the fire cult in Iran. The view of Feist (*Kultur der Indogermanen*, p. 345) that the fire worship takes its origin in respect to the spirits of the dead who congregate at the hearth is untenable; cf. Wissowa, *Archiv f. Religionswissenschaft*, vii. 45 ff. For Germany, see Caesar, *B. G.* i. 50; Helm, *Altgerm. Rel.* i. 258. See also below, Appendix E.

v2.c30.s3.6

But we must not decide from this that the origin of the rite was a mere spell : it is clearly the tendance of the god in the house, the family fire in a developed form in the Çrauta, in a simple form in the domestic ritual.

Linked texts (8)