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The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c30.s6: § 6. First-fruit Sacrifice (Āgrayaṇa Iṣṭi) and others

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c30.s6

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§ 6. First-fruit Sacrifice (Āgrayaṇa Iṣṭi) and others

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Before partaking of any of the fruits of the fields it is necessary for a man who has established the fires to make offerings.¹ The normal offerings are those of rice in autumn, and barley in spring: alternatives are bamboo seeds in summer, and millet in autumn or the rains: in these two cases Soma is the god to whom the offerings are made: in the other case Indra and Agni receive a cake of the new fruits, and the All-gods and heaven and earth also have offerings. In the first case the fee is a garment or a repaired car, in the second the firstborn of the calves cast that year. In place, however, of the ordinary Iṣṭi the new- and full-moon sacrifices may be performed, or the Agnihotra made night and morning with the new fruits. Or, again, the rice or barley may be given to a cow to eat, and then the Agnihotra offered with the milk of that cow. In that case the motive of the offering may be taken as merely a desire to secure that the first-fruits shall, in the first place, be used by some one other than man; but it is more probable that we have nothing more here than the not rare practice of giving animals food in place of the deities, or yet more probably that the offering is merely a variety of the normal offering, milk being used instead of the actual first-fruits, a simple explanation, and one perfectly reasonable in itself. The offering of first-fruits then remains a perfectly natural offering to the gods, rather however as the formulae show an offering to secure the safe use of the fruits, than the expression of gratitude to the gods for their gift. That it was felt to be in any way sacramental, or even as inducing a special sense of community, is not to be seen in the Vedic evidence.

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¹ ApÇS. vi. 29. 2 ff.; BÇS. iii. 12; MÇS. i. 6. 4; v; KÇS. iv. 6; ĀÇS. ii. 9; ÇÇS. iii. 12; Vait. viii. 4; Lindner, *Festgruss an Böhtlingk*, pp. 79 ff. In Mexico the eating of maize had to be preceded by a human sacrifice; Sahagun, trans. by Jourdanet and Siméon, pp. 126, 135; Hubert and Mauss, *Année sociol.* ii. 95, 97.

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Of other Iṣṭis there are innumerable varieties, but they are all based on the model of the new- and full-moon offerings, and differ only in the presence of certain new offerings. Thus, there are Iṣṭis for one who desires a son, for various purifications, for making people subject to the sacrificer, and so on. One of the most interesting is the Kārīrīṣṭi, which is obviously a dressed up rain spell. A black horse is placed in the east facing west; the sacrificer robes it with a black garment and makes it neigh, and from the sounds which it makes and its actions he can foretell rain.¹ The new- and full-moon offerings themselves can be applied to fulfil wishes, and forms of these offerings are mentioned such as the Munyayana, Turāyaṇa, and Vasiṣṭhayajña, which may extend to a year in duration.

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¹ HGS. xxii. 13.

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