The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c30.s6.1

v2.c30.s6.1

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.