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The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c30.s9: § 9. The Pravargya or Hot-milk Sacrifice

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c30.s9

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§ 9. The Pravargya or Hot-milk Sacrifice

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In the Soma sacrifice the Pravargya⁴ is inserted by the ritual text-books as an element which is to be performed twice a day in the course of the Upasad days, giving, with the normal three Upasads, six performances. But there is great doubt as to whether the rite is necessary, or whether it should be performed also at the first Agniṣṭoma, or not until after one has been performed. The discrepancy of opinion suggests that the rite was originally a separate sacrifice altogether, and this is borne out by the Rigveda, where it seems to have been an offering made in the morning only. From clay chosen from a pit east of the Āhavanīya fire, to which a horse leads the way, a Mahāvīra pot is made, a span high, two spare pots, and various other utensils. A stool of Muñja grass is also made as a throne for the pot. The pot is heated, the milk of a cow and a goat is poured in. Finally, the hot drink is offered to the Açvins, and two Rauhiṇa cakes are also offered in the morning to the day, in the evening to the night. At the outset of the ceremony the wife of the sacrificer is made to cover her head, but she joins with the rest at the close in the finale of the Sāman which is sung. At the end the offering utensils are arranged so as to make up the semblance of a man, the three Mahāvīra vessels marking the head, and so on. There are as usual prescriptions for the various accidents which may happen in the course of the rite, and, when it is performed, the sacrificer for a year eats no food, has intercourse with no woman of a certain class, and drinks from no earthen vessel. Moreover, for a year before the offering the same taboos should be observed and the rite studied in advance.

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⁴ ĀpÇS. xi. 2. 5 ff.; BÇS. ix; MÇS. iv; KÇS. xxvi; AÇS. iv. 6, 7; ÇÇS. v. 9 ff.; LÇS. i. 6; Vait. xiii; Garbe, ZDMG. xxxiv. 319 ff.; Weber, *Ind. Stud.* ix. 218 ff. For possible Greek parallels cf. Cook, *Zeus*, i. 676.

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The rite is explained by the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa¹ as a mystic union of the gods which provides a new body for the sacrificer, and this theory is accepted by Geldner,² who regards it as an allegory of sexual union generally. This is not an attractive explanation: the explanation of the Mahāvīra pot as a symbol of the Liṅga is wholly unsupported by a single word in the formulae, and the explanations of the Brāhmaṇas are always to be taken with the utmost care. On the other hand, we have clear suggestions in other passages that the rite, which is one of a specially dangerous, that is, sacred type,³ was understood as a sun spell, and this is directly indicated by the formulae used at the rite. The pot is covered with a golden plate, which can be nothing else than a symbol of fire or the sun, the pot glows, the milk, which in its whiteness is a sun symbol, boils with heat. The sacrificer by drinking as usual a share of the milk thus gains power at the same time as the sun is strengthened. Nor is there any objection to the fact that the offering is made to the Açvins: the turning of magic into prayer and sacrifice is a constant feature of the Vedic ritual, parallel to the turning of prayer and sacrifice into magic, and, once the rite existed, the idea of presenting the milk to the Açvins, the harbingers of morning, was almost inevitable.⁴

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¹ i. 22. 14; KB. viii. 3-7.

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² *Ved. Stud.* ii. 135.

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³ Cf. ÇB. xiv. 2. 2. 45; 3. 1. 14; TA. v. 3. 7; 6. 12. Hence the treatment of the rite in TA. iv and v; Oldenberg, *GN.* 1915, p. 387.

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⁴ Oldenberg, *Rel. des Veda*², pp. 448 ff.; Hillebrandt, *Ved. Myth.* ii. 217 ff.

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Mystically the rite seems in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa⁵ to have been interpreted in the sense that the pot was the sun, the milk the divine flood of life and light which falls to the sacrificer: as the sun is the head of the universe, so the pot is the head of the sacrificer: the rite provides the sacrificer and the universe alike with a head. Hence the deep reverence paid to the pot, and its optional character in the rite, since the Soma sacrifice by itself would confer the same blessings. The Aitareya Brāhmaṇa holds that it must not be performed until after a Soma sacrifice, a view which is explained by the Kauṣītaki Brāhmaṇa which requires that the body of the sacrificer should be first completed by the Soma sacrifice, and so made able to receive a head.

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⁵ Keith, *Taittirīya Saṁhitā*, i. pp. cxxiii-v; Eggeling, SBE. xliv. pp. xlvi-l.

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