Page:EB1911 - Volume 04.djvu/395

 other hand present their materials in a hopelessly jumbled form; for not only is each type of sacrifice not dealt with continuously and in orderly fashion, but short textual sections of mantras are constantly followed immediately by their dogmatic exegesis; the term brāhmaṇa thus applying in their case only to these detached comments and not to the connected series of them. Thus the most prominent subdivision of the older school, the Taittirīyas, in their Saṃhitā, have treated the main portion of the ceremonial in this promiscuous fashion, and to add to the confusion they have, by way of supplement, put forth a so-called Taittirīya-brāhmaṇa, which, so far from being a real Brāhmaṇa, merely deals with some additional rites in the same confused mixture of sacrificial formulae and dogmatic explanations. It is not without reason, therefore, that those two schools, the older and the younger, are commonly called the Black (kṛishṇa) and the White (sukla) Yajus respectively.

Although the ritualistic discussions of the Brāhmaṇas are for the most part of a dry and uninteresting nature to an even greater degree than is often the case with exegetic theological treatises, these works are nevertheless of considerable importance both as regards the history of Indian institutions and as “the oldest body of Indo-European prose, of a generally free, vigorous, simple form, affording valuable glimpses backwards at the primitive condition of unfettered Indo-European talk” (Whitney). Of especial interest in this respect are the numerous myths and legends scattered through these works. From the archaic style in which these mythological tales are usually composed, as well as from the fact that not a few of them are found in Brāhmaṇas of different schools and Vedas, though often with considerable variations, it seems pretty evident that the groundwork of them must go back to times preceding the composition or final redaction of the existing Brāhmaṇas. In the case of some of these legends—as those of Śunaḥ-Śepha, and the fetching of Soma from heaven—we can even see how they have grown out of germs contained in some of the Vedic hymns. If the literary style in which the exegetic discussion of the texts and rites is carried on in the Brāhmaṇas is, as a rule, of a very bald and uninviting nature, it must be borne in mind that these treatises are of a strictly professional and esoteric character, and in no way lay claim to being considered as literary compositions in any sense of the word. And yet, notwithstanding the general emptiness of their ritualistic discussions and mystic speculations, “there are passages in the Brāhmaṇas full of genuine thought and feeling, and most valuable as pictures of life, and as records of early struggles, which have left no trace in the literature of other nations” (M. Müller).

The chief interest, however, attaching to the Brāhmaṇas is doubtless their detailed description of the sacrificial system as practised in the later Vedic ages; and the information afforded by them in this respect should be all the more welcome to us, as the history of religious institutions knows of no other sacrificial ceremonial with the details of which we are acquainted to anything like the same extent. An even more complete and minutely detailed view of the sacrificial system is no doubt obtained from the ceremonial manuals, the Kalpa-sūtras; but it is just by the speculative discussions of the Brāhmaṇas—the mystic significance and symbolical colouring with which they invest single rites—that we gain a real insight into the nature and gradual development of this truly stupendous system of ritual worship.

The sacrificial ritual recognizes two kinds of śrauta sacrifices, viz. haviryajnas (meat-offerings), consisting of oblations (ishti) of milk, butter, cereals or flesh, and somayāgas or oblations of the juice of the soma plant. The setting up, by a householder, of a set of three sacrificial fires of his own constitutes the first ceremony of the former class, the Agny-ādhāna (or (?) Agny-ādheya). The first of the three fires laid down is the gārhapatya, or householder’s fire, so called because, though not taken from his ordinary house-fire, but as a rule specially produced by friction, it serves for cooking the sacrificial food, and thus, as it were, represents the domestic fire. From it the other two fires, the ānavanīya, or offering fire, and the dakshiṇāgni, or southern fire, used for certain special purposes, are taken. The principal other ceremonies of this class are the new and full moon offerings, the oblations made at the commencement of the three seasons, the offering of first-fruits, the animal sacrifice, and the Agnihotra, or daily morning and evening oblation of milk, which, however, is also included amongst the gṛihya, or domestic rites, as having to be performed daily on the domestic fire by the householder who keeps no regular set of sacrificial fires.

Of a far more complicated nature than these offerings are the Soma-sacrifices, which, besides the simpler ceremonies of this class, such as the Agnishtoma or “Praise of Agni,” also include great state functions, such as the Räjasūya or consecration of a king, and the Aśvamedha or horse-sacrifice, which, in addition to the sacrificial rites, have a considerable amount of extraneous, often highly interesting, ceremonial connected with them, which makes them seem to partake largely of the nature of public festivals. Whilst the oblations of Soma-juice, made thrice on each offering-day, amidst chants and recitations, constitute the central rites of those services, their ritual also requires numerous single oblations of the ishti kind, including at least three animal offerings, and in some cases the immolation of many hecatombs of victims. Moreover, a necessary preliminary to every Soma-sacrifice is the construction, in five layers, of a special fire-altar of large dimensions, consisting of thousands of bricks, formed and baked on the spot, to each, or each group, of which a special symbolic meaning is attached. The building of this altar is spread over a whole year, during which period the sacrificer has to carry about the sacrificial fire in an earthen pan for at least some time each day, until it is finally deposited on the completed altar to serve as the offering-fire for the Soma oblations. The altar itself is constructed in the form of a bird, because Soma was supposed to have been brought down from heaven by the metre Gāyatrī which had assumed the form of an eagle. Whilst the Soma-sacrifice has been thus developed by the Brāhmaṇas in an extraordinary degree, its essential identity with the Avestan Haoma-cult shows that its origin goes back at all events to the Indo-Iranian period.

Among the symbolic conceits in which the authors of the Brāhmaṇas so freely indulge, there is one overshadowing all others—if indeed they do not all more or less enter into it—which may be considered as the sum and substance of these speculations, and the esoteric doctrine of the sacrifice, involved by the Brāhmanical ritualists. This is what may conveniently be called the Prajāpati theory, by which the “Lord of Creatures,” the efficient cause of the universe, is identified with both the sacrifice (yajna) and the sacrificer (yajamāna). The origin of this theory goes back to the later Vedic hymns. In the so-called Purusha-sūkta (Ṛigv. x. 90) in which the supreme spirit is conceived of as the person or man (purusha), born in the beginning, and consisting of “whatever hath been and whatever shall be,” the creation of the visible and invisible universe is represented as originating from an “all-offered” (holocaust) sacrifice in which the Purusha himself forms the offering-material (havis), or, as we might say, the victim. In this primeval, or rather timeless because ever-proceeding, sacrifice, time itself, in the shape of its unit the year, is made to take its part, inasmuch as the three seasons—spring, summer and autumn—of which it consists, constitute the ghee (clarified butter), the offering-fuel and the oblation respectively. These speculations may be said to have formed the foundation on which the theory of the sacrifice, as propounded in the Brāhmaṇas, has been reared. Prajāpati—who (probably for practical considerations, as better representing the sacrificer, the earthly ruler, or “lord of the creatures”) here takes the place of the Purusha, the world-man or all-embracing personality—is offered up anew in every sacrifice; and inasmuch as the very dismemberment of the lord of creatures, which took place at that archtypal sacrifice, was in itself the creation of the universe, so every sacrifice is also a repetition of that first creative act. Thus the periodical sacrifice is nothing else than a microcosmic representation of the ever-proceeding destruction and renewal of all cosmic life and matter. The ritualistic theologians, however, go an important step