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Dr. S. Ramakrishna Sharma

<d.ramakrishnan2@gmail.com>

a Vedic yajna performed.. now, did it

rain?
1 message

Thu, Jul 8, 2010 at 11:06

Sourav Mukherjee <souravmoo@gmail.com>
AM
To: "Dr. S. Ramakrishna Sharma" <d.ramakrishnan2@gmail.com>

http://www.venumenon.com/articles/article_page.asp?catid=13&artid=23

Cupping the Vedic Flame

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In May 1990, a near-extinct Vedic ritual, the most

ancient system of worship to have survived, came alive
in an obscure little village. The objective: to foster
universal well-being. This is a record of that event.

Inflation is
rampant on the
dirt track leading
to the hallowed
zone where a
great Vedic ritual
holds the
attention of the
world.

As the crowds
draw near the
thatched complex
called the
yagnasala, the air reverberates with Vedic chants. The
juxtapositions grow stark, tenses mingle, past and present
fuse. Time flips back 3,000 years as a fossilised tradition is
resuscitated with the breath of the present.

The Sagnichitya Athiratra Somayaga that held sway for 12

days in the sleepy village of Kundur in Trichur district in
Kerala, South India, served as much to preserve a tradition on
the verge of extinction as to foster universal well-being. To
observe the mechanics of the process, a bevy of scientists
arrived with expensive equipment and wired the ritualists for
data.

This heightened interest brought into the limelight a field of

knowledge fast fading from public cognizance. Vedic rites have
traditionally passed on from one generation of Namboodiris,
the priestly community, to the next, but the graph is a tapering

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one. Modern Vedic scholars despair the disintegration of

ancestral links. With modern-day pressures, it may not be
possible to stage these elaborate, ancient rituals in the future.

This anxiety motivated Frits Staal, an authority on the Vedas,

to rustle up funds and organise an Athiratra Yajna at Panjal in
Kerala in 1975. Namboodiri doyens were persuaded to impart
their knowledge to a select team of ritualists, both young and
old. The result was a two-volume work by Staal entitled Agni:
The Vedic Ritual of the Fire Altar, which today serves both as a
reference text and as an authoritative ritualistic textbook. The
yajna organised by Staal came 20 years after a 1956
performance of the same ritual.

The Sagnichitya Athiratra Somayaga combines two Vedic

rituals that complement each other. The first, the
Mahagnichayana, is a fire ritual which involves the
construction of a fire altar made from a thousand clay bricks,
which finally take a form resembling an eagle with
outstretched wings. The laying of each brick is heralded by the
recitation of mantras from the Yajur Veda. The altar consists of
five layers with 200 bricks in each layer. The sacred fire is
placed on this altar.

The other complementary ritual is the Athiratra Somayaga, in

which the main offering is the juice of the soma creeper -
believed to be symbolic of the nectar of the gods - which is
poured into the sacred fire. The Athiratra is known to exist as
an independent ritual. But in Kerala, it is always performed
together with the Mahagnichayana.

The Somayaga, perhaps the most ancient system of worship to

have survived, is an elaborate ritual meant primarily to
engender universal prosperity through the potent vibrations
emitted during the recitation of the Vedic mantras. The
mantras are thought to have a beneficial effect on human

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beings, animals and the environment - a line of inquiry that

drew a team of scientists to Kundur.

The 12-day yajna is a collage of picturesque rites which opens

with the kindling of the sacred fires - garhapatya, ahavaneeya
and dakshinagni - and the preparation of the eagle- shaped,
brick fire altar onto which the juice of the soma creeper is
poured as the most important offering of the ritual. In mythical
lore, the juice of the soma creeper symbolises the amrith or
nectar brought from the heavens by Gayatri, in the form of an
eagle (garuda). The soma juice is poured continuously, round
the clock, for two days.

The preparation of the ukha pot in itself is an important

prelude. The pot is crafted with the clay that has been
ritualistically trampled upon by a horse and then carried on the
back of a donkey. The pot is heated in one of the sacred fires,
the ahavaneeya. Combustible materials like coconut fibres,
twigs and cowdung cakes are crammed into the pot, resulting
in the generation of fire. The pot is later placed in the brick
altar.

An eye-catching highlight is the mode of producing fire by

'churning' the wooden layers, a process that could take from
minutes to hours. The fire thus generated is used in the
conduct of the crucial rites. The run-up to the last three days -
undoubtedly the most crucial phase in the entire ritual - is
marked by pravargya and upaasad, a series of protracted
propitiatory rites.

The yajna has its own nomenclature. The person who oversees
the proceedings is called the yajamanan. He undergoes severe
austerities during the days when the ritual is in progress, and
is not allowed to eat or wash himself. He is assisted by 15
functionaries known as ritwicks, who help execute the ritual
and recite or chant the Vedic mantras. The austerities

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undergone by the yajamanan are meant to prepare him

spiritually for the final rite - the offering of the soma juice.

The Athiratra ritual has three stages. The first is the

preparation of the implements and materials necessary for the
ritual. The second is its execution. And the third involves the
disposal of all the material left behind after the completion of
the ritual.

It is as part of the third stage that the brick altar is set ablaze,
generating a visual spectacle that marks a grand finale to the
12-day ritual. The conflagration symbolises the surrendering of
all materials unto nature.

The scriptures lay down specifications of locale and time for the
conduct of the Sagnichitya Athiratra Somayaga. The site must
constitute level ground close to a natural water source. The
yajna should be conducted on a day marked by a 'divine
constellation' (deva nakshatra).

The meaning and symbolism behind the ritual is a subject of

speculation among Vedic scholars. The operation manuals for
conducting these rituals are called the sroutha sutras in Vedic
parlance. And those texts that attempt to explain the rationale
behind the rites are known as the brahmanas. While the
sroutha sutras are explicit as regards the modus operandi to be
followed, the brahmanas are a complex corpus of largely
speculative and interpretive ideas that try to explain the
significance behind the rituals.

Charles Malamoud, a professor of Sanskrit and Indian Studies

at the Ecole Des Hautes Etudes (School for Advanced Studies),
Paris University, observes: "Abstract and speculative thoughts
first started in India with these rituals. Such yagnasalas were
the first laboratories of mental devices such as what is
principal, what is subsidiary, what is whole, what is part of

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whole, what is the original form and what is the variation".

These concepts are basic to the quest for knowledge, and
govern the practice of the Vedic rituals.

One possible interpretation for the construction of the fire altar

is that each brick is the concretisation of an abstract Vedic
mantra. They add up to a thousand bricks, which is the total
number of mantras rendered during this phase.

The Vedas are not without a controversial dimension, a feature

that often hounds such performances. Animal sacrifices are a
prescribed prerequisite for the Athiratra ritual. Even the mode
of killing is graphically described. The Yajur Veda prescribes
the slaughter of 11 goats by strangulation on the main day of
the ritual. In fact, all Somayagas (of which the Athiratra ritual
is one) have the animal sacrifice element as a Vedic
stipulation. Accordingly, goats were sacrificed during the 1956
yajna. But the practice had to be abandoned during the 1976
ritual when a public agitation erupted over the issue. This year
the option was not even considered by the organisers, who
resorted instead to innocuous symbolism. The fact remains that
the mammoth turn-out at the yajna site consisted largely of an
uncomprehending public. Most of those who came were
conscious only of standing in the shadow of a momentous
event.

What exactly is the yajna meant to achieve? An answer to that

must necessarily take us to the very nature of Vedic rituals.
There are basically two categories: the drishya and sroutha
rituals. The first set of rites pertain to individual welfare and
centre around child-naming ceremonies and the like. The
second category has as its objective universal well-being,
extending to human beings, plants and animals. The two
categories exist separately in the Vedas.

The manuals of the sroutha category, called the sroutha sutras,

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are varied. Those employed in Kerala and at the Kundur yajna

are drawn specifically from the Kaushitiki in the case of the Rig
Veda, the Boudhayana with regard to the Yajur Veda and the
Jaiminiya in relation to the Sama Veda. The yajna employs
mantras derived from these Vedic texts.

The operation manuals are in Malayalam and until recently

were preserved in the form of palm-leaf manuscripts. The
manuals were translated into Malayalam from their original
Sanskrit more than 200 years ago. An obvious advantage was
that they afforded access to those not well-versed in Sanskrit.
But a disadvantage was that it kept local ritualists from
bothering with the orginal Sanskrit texts. It also isolated them
from scholarly interaction outside Kerala.

This could lead to pitfalls as evidenced at the Kundur yajna.

The yajamanan originally announced for the ritual was
Kavapramarath Shankaranarayanan Somayajipad. A birth in
his family polluted him, creating an unprecedented crisis which
could be resolved only by referring to the original Sanskrit text
for guidance. But none of the leading figures among the
ritualists in Kerala was proficient enough in Sanskrit for the
purpose. It was finally resolved that a new yajamanan would
be named.

The yajna performance is

preceded by long years of
training and practice. A ritualist
entrusted with reciting the Vedic
mantras must do it alone for
several hours non-stop, without
committing a single error in
tone, pronunciation or textual
accuracy. There is, therefore, a
paucity of such experts. Two
acknowledged names in Kerala are C V Somayajipad and

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Nellikkat Mamunnu Neelakantan Akkithiripad. Somayajipad, an

expert on Rig Vedic and Yajur Vedic mantras, died in March
1990 at the age of 89. That left the 85-year-old Akkithiripad, a
Sama Veda expert, to carry the torch alone. And after him,
who will?

This is the daunting question that prompted the setting up of

an organisation to preserve the yajna system from
irretrievable loss. Under the tutelage of Somayajipad and
Akkithiripad, 50 Vedic students were trained in the skills of
performing yajnas.

The scientists who attended the yajna used their sophisticated

equipment to evaluate its impact on the ritualists, the
spectators and the environment. Areas of special focus included
the effect of the mantras on plants and animals, on brain
tissue, blood pressure, respiration and heart-beat rate. Also
installed was a Kirlion camera to detect electromagnetic
radiation emanating from human bodies.

Preliminary observations indicated that the yajna had the

effect of dramatically reducing fungal spores around Kundur.
Long-suffering asthma patients reportedly experienced relief.

One question, however, has continued to haunt the public

imagination. Will the yajna produce rain? The organisers say
no such claim exists in the Vedas. It did rain at the end of the
yajna performed in 1975. But the organisers would like to
think of it as a coincidence.

The association between the yajna and rain is indelible. Did it

rain on May 9, 1990?

It did.

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