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The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c30.s5: § 5. The Four-month or Seasonal Sacrifices

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c30.s5

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§ 5. The Four-month or Seasonal Sacrifices

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The three four-month offerings³ are connected intimately with the seasons of the year, the Vaiçvadeva being offered in spring, the Varuṇapraghāsas in the rains, and the Sākamedhas in the autumn, at the beginning of each season. The connexion with the seasons is shown by the formulae, the names of the months which are connected with certain libations, and the formal cutting of the hair which is connected with certain of the rites. The man who first performs them must begin with an Iṣṭi to Agni Vaiçvānara and Parjanya or an Anvārambhaṇīyā Iṣṭi. In each case the sacrifice is introduced by five libations to Agni, Soma, Savitṛ, Sarasvatī, and Pūṣan. In the first follow offerings to the Maruts, to the All-gods, and to heaven and earth, the first and last of cakes, the second of a milk mess. The season is indicated by the use of a tree with budding branches for the wood for the fire, while the strew is made from plants which are shooting.

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³ ApÇS. viii; BÇS. v; MÇS. i. 7; KÇS. v; ĀÇS. ii. 15–20; ÇÇS. iii. 13–18; Vait. viii. 8 ff.; Weber, *Ind. Stud.* x. 337.

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The second offering, the Varuṇapraghāsas, is more important. One point in it is the preparation of two animals, a ram and sheep, from barley, which the sacrificer and his wife cover with wool and equip with the marks of sex made prominent; the Adharyu makes the one, the Pratiprasthātṛ the other: there are two Vedis, and the south one is assigned to the latter priest, who there performs a mimicry of the action of the Adhvaryu. There are offerings to Indra and Agni, to Varuṇa, to the Maruts and to Ka: the ram and the ewe are offered in the milk messes presented to Varuṇa and the Maruts respectively, the remainder being eaten. A further important point is the ceremony already referred to,⁴ by which the wife of the sacrificer is called upon to admit what lovers she has and to offer in the Dakṣiṇa fire the plates of Karambha, ‘porridge’, which number one more than the members of the family. The husband and wife then share a bath, washing each other in it. The two elements of the rite are clearly enough the aim to secure the abundance of the flocks, and the sin offering to Varuṇa, whose presence in the rite may be due either to his deep and undeniable connexion with water, or merely be accounted for by the sin offering and the concluding bath, which are clearly in great measure merely pieces of magic to which a religious connexion has been attached.

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⁴ Above, Part III, Chap. 18, § 3. For the two figures Hubert and Mauss (*Année sociol.* ii. 111) adopt the view that they represent the spirit of barley as fertilizing and fertilized, which is eaten in the rite, and that the ram is ‘Varuṇa visible’, but this is quite impossible, or a mere mistranslation of ÇB. ii. 5. 2. 16.

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The third festival is the Sākamedhas: the number of offerings in it, especially for the Maruts, is considerable, but the most important element is a feast for the dead, the Pitṛyajña, or Mahāpitṛyajña, where the Fathers are honoured as Somavantas, ‘connected with Soma’, sitting on the strew, and as ‘burnt by Agni’. The rite follows the rules for offerings to the dead: it takes place in a hut south of the Dakṣiṇa fire, in which a Vedi is made and the fire there placed: the offerings are made with the term Svadhā¹ in place of Svāhā. Still more important is an offering to Tryambaka,² which is an offering to Rudra, everything therefore being done in the north, the region of that god. At a cross-way a fire is made and cakes offered in it, at least four, but properly one more than the number of the members of the family. One, however, is thrown upon an ant-heap in the north with the words, ‘This is thy portion: the mole is thine animal, O Rudra’. On returning the priests engaged and the sacrificer all say, ‘We supplicate Rudra away from us, away the god Tryambaka’. As in the offering to the Fathers, they go round the fire thrice from right to left, smiting the left thigh, then thrice in the opposite and normal way, smiting the right thigh, and the same form is followed by the unmarried women of the family, in verses which show that they hoped thus to secure marriage and avoid death. The remains of the cakes the sacrificer throws up in the air and catches as they fall: the cakes are then tied up in two baskets, tied to a bamboo, and placed on a tree³ or some similar object so high that an ox cannot reach them. Rudra is then asked to go away beyond the Mūjavants, after which the breath is held and the sacrificers return from the place without looking back,⁴ and touch water. The fee is a white horse, or a bull, white or with white marks. The festival is followed by an offering to Çunāsīrau, which is evidently an agricultural rite for ploughing, addressed to two parts or deities of the plough. The features of it are a cake on twelve potsherds for Çunāsīrau or Indra Çunāsīrīya, fresh milk or barley gruel for Vāyu, and a cake on one potsherd for Sūrya: the fee is a six or twelve span plough or two plough beasts, while for the offering to Sūrya a white horse or sheep is the fee. A curious way of celebrating the whole of the offering together, in five days from the 11th day of the light half of Phālguna to the full moon, is recorded as practised by the Kaṭhas. The offerings can also be connected with the Soma and the animal offering in such a way that the six days of the three make up a Pṛṣṭhya Ṣaḍaha.

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¹ This term is of ambiguous sense, but refers perhaps to the self-disposal or volition of the dread spirits. This according to Oldenberg (*Rel. des Veda*², p. 531, n. 3) is due to their partaking of the food for the dead. *Contra*, Colinet, *Mélanges Lévi*, pp. 159 ff.

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² Arbman, *Rudra*, pp. 48–64; Hillebrandt, *Ved. Myth.* ii. 186 ff.

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³ So also in the Baudhyavihāra rite in HÇS. ii. 9. 1. Rudra thus stands out in ritual as associated with a primitive mode of offering. Cf. above, Chap. 9, § 10.

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⁴ This common rite in connexion with chthonic powers Weber (*Rājasūya*, p. 11, n. 4) ingeniously but most implausibly conjectures to be due to a desire to show the complete confidence of safety produced in the mind of the performer by his devotion. The placing of gifts on a tree is a rite with many parallels; Meyer (*Gesch. d. Alt.*³ I. ii. p. 722) holds that the idea is to bring the offering (e. g. in Ilion and Bambyke live animals) into immediate contact with the divinity temporarily resident in the tree. Cook (*Zeus*, i. 533) holds that the fertilizing animal is placed on the tree to secure its life. We are reduced to mere conjecture. Helm (*Altgerm. Rel.* i. 244 f.) ascribes the German rite (Tac. *Ann.* i. 67) either to an offering to wind and air demons or to tree spirits.

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