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$Unique_ID{bob00802}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{History Of Religions
Chapter II: Part I}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Foot Moore, George}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{gods
rig-veda
rites
sacrifice
priests
like
soma
place
ritual
form}
$Date{1913}
$Log{}
Title:       History Of Religions
Book:        Religions Of India
Author:      Foot Moore, George
Date:        1913

Chapter II: Part I

     The proper conduct of sacrifice demands the assistance of priests who are
expert in the ritual and know the proper invocations, and can recite the
ancient hymns of praise and prayer or compose new ones.  Kings and other great
persons had a priestly adviser, Purohita, a kind of private chaplain, who
often held his place for life and had much influence with his princely patron.
In the greater sacrifices a considerable number of priests was employed, each
of whom had his own particular function.  In a verse of the Rig-Veda (II, 1,
2) seven classes are named.  The most important of them are the Hotar, who
recites the hymns, and the Adhvaryu, the officiating priest, who, himself or
with the assistance of others, attends to the sacrificial fire, strews the
grass for the gods to sit on, arranges and purifies the utensils, prepares and
offers the cakes, presses, filters, and offers the soma.  Besides these, the
Udgatar, or singing priest, who is not named in the list cited, is a
conspicuous figure in the developed liturgy; he accompanies certain stages of
the ceremony with his hymns set to fixed melodies.  Over all these stands, in
the later ritual, the Brahman, a master of ceremonies learned in all three
Vedas, who keeps an eye on the whole performance, and promptly intervenes to
correct or remedy any error or omission. ^1

[Footnote 1: The prose formulas which the Adhvaryu pronounces at each turn in
his performance constitute the Yajur-Veda; the songs of the Udgatar the
Sama-Veda.  The texts of the Hotar form the Rig-Veda.]

     For the household rites which every Aryan observes the fire on the
domestic hearth suffices, and the head of the house in person or a Brahman for
him officiates.  Princes and wealthy men, as well as Brahmans, offer greater
sacrifices with an elaborate and complicated ritual, for which three fires are
necessary.  One of these is lighted from the hearth, and is called the
householder's fire; the second, situated toward the east, is the sacrificial
fire, to which the offerings are actually committed; the third, or southern,
fire serves for rites of aversion, to ward off the evil influences of the
manes and other spirits.

     The fixed times of sacrifice are the new moon, the full moon, and the
beginning of the three seasons of the year; further, the solstices,
particularly the winter solstice, and the feasts of first-fruits.  The
material of the offerings includes various species of food: milk, butter,
grains, meal, cakes of different kinds, and domestic animals - neat cattle,
sheep, and goats.  The commonest victim was a goat; the horse sacrifice, the
most costly of all, was offered only by kings on great occasions.  The colour
and sex of the victims are related in many cases to the deities to whom they
are offered, and in other respects the choice is subject to various rules;
many physical defects render an animal unfit for sacrifice. The victim was
"quieted" by strangling or suffocation, without shedding blood, and, if
possible, without allowing it to make a sound, the priests and worshippers
turning their backs upon the scene.  The caul (great omentum) was first
removed and broiled on a spit; then various parts of the animal, beginning
with the heart, were boiled and offered to the gods. Other parts were eaten by
the priests, and what was left was divided between the priests and the giver
of the sacrifice.  The blood and offal from the carcass was given to the
demons (Rakshases).

     The soma offering holds beyond comparison the highest place among the
Vedic sacrifices; with it the Rig-Veda is especially associated.  This
pre-eminence is perhaps to be attributed in some degree to the partiality of
the priests, though the importance of soma even in Indo-Iranian times is
unquestioned.  In the form which it has in the ritual books, this offering
must have been restricted to the very rich.  The soma offering has no fixed
season, though spring is named as an auspicious time for it.  The libation is
made to a whole catalogue of gods in a fixed order at the three "pressings"
(morning, midday, and evening); but principally to Indra, who not only shares
at morning and evening with the other gods, but has the midday pressing for
himself alone.  The gods who participate in the morning pressing are Indra and
Vayu, Mitra and Varuna, the Acvins, Sarasvati, "the All-gods." In the evening,
according to the ritual of the younger Vedas, the Adityas, Savitar, the
All-gods, Agni, and Indra.

     The preparations for the offering lasted through many days, and called
into requisition the services of numerous priests and attendants.  On the day
of sacrifice the rites began in the early morning; the priests were busy with
the preparation and offering of cakes and the libation of milk, the sacrifice
of eleven he-goats to different gods, the expressing of the juice from the
stalks of the soma plant, filtering the liquid, mixing it with water, milk, or
honey, decanting it from one vessel to another, pouring out libations to the
gods, drinking the priests' share, all with manifold and minutely regulated
forms and motions; the singing priests intoned their chants as the soma
dripped through the sieve, to the responses of the officiating priest, with
his solemn "Om." The gods and their wives, above all, Indra, who has come with
his chariot and pair of tawny steeds, are seated invisible on the mat of grass
spread for them.  So it goes on morning, noon, and night.

     Before and during a sacrifice certain preparations were obligatory,
including fasting, abstinence from cohabitation, sleeping on the ground,
bathing, shaving, fresh garments, and the like.  The duration and severity of
the restrictions varied with the solemnity of the occasion; at the great soma
offering the fasting was, at least in the theory of the ritual books,
protracted to emaciation.  At the close of the ceremonies another bath was
prescribed.  The purifications keep away the malign demonic influences from
the holy place, and remove from the worshippers the hardly less dangerous
contagion of holiness; the fasting, as in many savage religions, predisposes
to abnormal psychical states, which are attributed to spirits and in higher
religions become communion with the gods and revelation from them.  The rites
of worship are attended at every turn by words and acts to repel the demons
that frequent the place of sacrifice and try to nullify it; water and fire and
the potent formula are the means chiefly employed.

     The notions of the operation and effect of sacrifice which appear in the
Veda are sufficiently simple.  Man wants the protection and help of the gods,
the gifts which they can bestow - health, good fortune, children, cows.  He
believes that they are approachable in the same way as the great of this earth
and amenable to the same motives.  They enjoy hearing their own praises sung,
their power and goodness magnified, their assistance asked; they are pleased
with the gifts men bring them, especially with ample provision of food and of
the divine drink, soma.  Like generous men, they will not fail to make a
liberal return for the good things they accept.  This is commonly taken for
granted, or more or less delicately hinted in the praise of the god's
goodness; but it is not seldom more frankly outspoken: "Give me; I give to
thee." "Drink, strengthen thyself; thine are the pressed draughts of soma, O
Indra, now as heretofore.  As thou hast drunk the old, so drink to-day, thou
blessed one, the new. . . . Bring on!  None shall hinder thee.  We know thee,
the owner of treasures. Indra, lord of the tawny steeds, grant us thy greatest
gift." "Enjoy the soma, satisfy thy desire with it; then turn thy mind to give
treasures." Gifts to the gods are accompanied, therefore, by petitions for
their gifts - petitions common and general, or specific of particular needs.
The sacrifices which are made to avert the displeasure of the gods and recover
their favour do not differ either in ritual or conception from those which
take their gracious disposition for granted; only the petition takes a
different form, as in many hymns to Varuna beseeching him to forgive the sin
and loose its bonds, removing the guilt and the punishment.

     This is the prevailing notion of sacrifice in the Rig-Veda; but beside it
is the belief that the rites are potent of themselves to ward off evils
proceeding from human or demonic ill-wishers.  The belief in the effectiveness
of sacrifice to propitiate the gods and procure their blessings tends
everywhere to become a faith in the unfailing efficacy of the rites and
formulas themselves, when duly employed, to secure the desired good; and in
the hands of the Brahman priesthood sacrifice becomes a veritable power over
the gods, which logically ends by exalting the possessors of this power to the
rank of human gods who constrain the gods of nature, and takes the cultus back
again completely into the sphere of sacerdotal magic out of which the rise of
anthropomorphic deities incompletely extricated it.  Of this portentous
regression the beginnings, or at least the premises, can be discerned in the
Rig-Veda; the consequent development comes later.

     Besides sacrifices and offerings, expiations have a large place in most
religions.  These rites are much more persistently connected with magical
conceptions and customs than sacrifices proper.  We can trace in them several
stages of development.  Most ancient expiatory rites are in form a
purification; that is, they are means employed to remove an evil which is
imagined as an invisible and highly contagious substance, adhering to the
person affected by it, a disease, for instance, a ceremonial defilement, or
the anger of the gods.  All of these may be removed by the use of water or
fire, or of blood, which has always been regarded as possessing extraordinary
potency in this sphere.  In other cases, the evil, whether disease or
pollution or guilt, is magically transferred to an enemy, personal or tribal,
or laid upon an animal, which is then sent away, carrying away with it the
mischief with which it is laden.  Such rites are commonly called, from the
ceremonies of the Jewish Day of Atonement, "scapegoat" rites.  Of course any
sort of an animal, or a human being, as in the Thargelia at Athens, may be so
used, or an inanimate object, as among the Malay peoples, who ship the
smallpox off to sea in a boat. ^1

[Footnote 1: See also above, pp. 106 f.]

     With the development of the higher religion such evils come to be
attributed, though not consistently, to a deity who has been offended in some
way by men, and inflicts, directly or through the instrumentality of demons,
the evil consequences of his displeasure upon men.  This change in the
conception of the source or cause of the evil does not, however, involve any
change in the notion of the nature of the evil; the old rites of expiation and
purification are still efficacious, but they take their place in the religion
of the gods, with the result that the notions of disease, uncleanness, guilt,
sin, and punishment are still more hopelessly confused.

     The Rig-Veda, being a collection of hymns to the gods, gives us only
occasional and incidental glimpses of the under side of religion, which is the
proper sphere of magic.  The Atharva-Veda, on the other hand, is a collection
of magical charms, as indeed its name imports.  The collection as such is
later than that of the Rig-Veda, and contains many younger hymns, but the bulk
of the magical verses themselves, in substance, if not always in their actual
form - some of them have been subjected to Brahmanic manipulation - are of
great antiquity.  The charms accompanied magical ceremonies, and are often
intelligible only when we know, e. g., from the Kaucika Sutra, the nature of
the rites.

     Diseases and ailments of all sorts are the work of demons, or, with less
distinct personification, are produced by a foreign disease-substance, a kind
of fluid or ether, which gets into a man and undoes him.  Remedies, often
chosen on the principles of magical homoeopathy from all the kingdoms of
nature, exhibited secundum artem, and the efficacious charm pronounced over
the sufferer, expel the mischief or the mischief-maker.  Other formulas are
potent against the whole genus of Rakshases or Picacas, or thwart the
machinations of sorcerers and turn their devices back on their own heads.
There are charms to harmonise family discords, to avert jealousy, and the
like; to procure a good husband, male offspring, and a thousand other ends of
human desires.  The magic of self-defence is not, however, the only kind; by
its side are rites and charms to inflict manifold injury on a man's enemies,
to constrain unwilling love, to destroy a dreaded rival.  The gods are
sometimes invoked to launch their curses against the object of man's hate.
The large place such black magic has in the Atharva-Veda is probably the
principal reason why, in its Brahmanised form, it was not put on the same
footing in the canon with the three Vedas (Rik, Sama, Yajus); but this lack of
canonical recognition did not detract from its reputation for efficacy nor
restrict its use.

     The oldest belief of the Indians, like that of most other peoples, was
that the dead continued to exist in a ghostly state.  They still had need of
food and drink, and came back from time to time to their former homes to
receive the provision which their surviving kinsfolk made for them; if their
wants were not supplied, they might avenge the neglect.  Ghosts are an uncanny
folk whom the living do not like to have about; hence, at stated seasons,
especially at the new moon, a meal is prepared for them, consisting chiefly of
boiled rice.  The "fathers," from their "ancient pathways," are formally
invited to this feast.  Water is poured into little grass-lined trenches for
their ablutions; then a portion of the rice is put into the trenches,
designating by name the ancestors - father, grandfather, and great-grandfather
- for whom each portion is meant, and they are bidden to fall to; other
offerings, of oil, perfume, and the like, follow.  When this ceremony is
completed, the offerer expresses in set form his veneration of the "fathers,"
and his wishes, for example (looking at the house): "Homage to you, O fathers;
give us a house, ye fathers!" (looking at the balls of rice): "May we have, ye
fathers, wherewith to offer you!" Pieces of cloth or tufts of wool are then
presented in a similar way.  In conclusion, the fathers are dismissed, with a
polite request not to present themselves again until the next moon.

     The primitive notions which are implied in this ritual have even in the
Rig-Veda made room for other conceptions, according to which the blessed dead
have their abode in the heaven of light where Yama (the first man to die,
ruler over the realm of the dead) dwells.  "Where pleasures and bliss, where
enjoyment and gratification, where all wishes are attained, there let me be
immortal!" (Rig-Veda, IX, 113, 7 ff.).  In this shining home the souls enjoy
the offerings which their pious kinsmen make to them. It would be a mistake to
think that this heavenly happiness was the lot of all the dead.  Like the
Greek Elysium or the Islands of the Blest, like the Egyptian Fields of Earu,
the heaven of Yama was doubtless originally the abode of "the death-defying
heroes" and of generous princes who make great offerings to the gods and
liberal donations to the priests; the godly, "who by ascesis have attained to
the sun"; those who have done good.

     The opposite fate of the bad is seldom, yet unmistakably, intimated in
the Rig-Veda: "Indra and Soma, hurl the evil-doer into the prison, into
fathomless darkness, whence none shall come out again!  So shall your stern
might constrain them"; "Beneath the earth shall all they dwell who by day and
night contrive deceit against us." "Those who roam like brotherless maidens,
who lead an evil life like wives that deceive their husbands, who are wicked,
faithless, false - such have prepared for themselves that deep place." The
Atharva-Veda and later texts, Brahmanic and heretical, depict in lurid colours
the horrors of hell and develop more strictly the notion of retribution.  Of
the transmigration of souls which fills so large a place in the following
ages, the Rig-Veda knows nothing.

     The centuries following the age of the Vedic hymns may be described as
the Brahmanic period.  In it the great body of ritual works which are called
Brahmanas was elaborated and attained fixed form in the tradition of the
several Vedic schools, and by the exclusive knowledge of the complicated
ceremonies and the efficacious formulas on the correctness of which men's
welfare here and hereafter depended, the Brahman priesthood, now become a
caste in the strictest sense of the word, raised itself to a superhuman rank.
This enormous power was achieved without worldly means; the priests had no
hierarchy, no ecclesiastical organisation, no temples under their control.

     The Brahmanas are primarily minute prescriptions for the performance of
religious rites; but to these are attached explanations of the origin and
significance of the ceremonies as a whole or of particular details in them -
interpretations sometimes mythological or legendary, sometimes symbolical.
This commentary on the liturgy, if we may call it so, finds not infrequent
occasion for theological or philosophical digressions, the starting-point of
which is usually the cosmogonic problem.  These subjects are the chief themes
of the so-called Forest Books (Aranyakas) and the Upanishads, which are
appended externally to the Brahmanas.

     In several hymns in the Rig-Veda which by various marks are recognised as
among the latest in the collection, and in similar compositions in the
Atharva-Veda, the unity of the godhead is taught.  It is not one of the great
gods of the Vedic religion and mythology who is thus exalted to a supreme
place, but sometimes one, sometimes another, of a class of deities who owed
their importance to the favour of priestly circles, such as Brihaspati or
Brahmanaspati, or are abstract creations of priestly poets like Vicvakarman or
Prajapati.  Brihaspati or Brahmanaspati, the Prayer Lord, is a transparent
personification of prayer.  "Prayer" must not, however, be understood in this
connection as the humble, spontaneous petition of the worshippers, but as the
potent word of the priest which even in the Rig-Veda "strengthens" the gods,
who are dependent on it as they are on offering, and in the Brahmanic age both
enables and constrains the gods.

     By this logic Brihaspati becomes the greatest god; the deeds of Indra and
of Varuna are attributed to him directly.  He is called the father of the
gods; before there were any gods he brought out of non-being all that is.  The
origin of the world is ascribed in the Rig-Veda to Vicvakarman also, the Maker
of All (Rig-Veda, X, 81 and 82), and to Prajapati, the Creator (X, 121); in
the Brahmans usually to Prajapati.  He brings it into existence, not by fiat
out of nothing, nor by shaping formless matter, but produces it out of
himself.  Repeatedly it is said that Prajapati was this universe in the
beginning, alone; he desired, "I will reproduce myself, I will become many";
by fervid ascetic exercises, with utmost effort, he brought forth the three
worlds - the earth, the atmosphere, the heaven; brooding over these, there
arose the three great lights, Agni, Vayu, and Aditya, and from them the three
Vedas; or he produced the creatures by means of a sacrifice or other ritual
performances.  There are many different representations of the order of
creation; but the sacerdotal conceit that the cosmogony itself was effected by
the magical power of religious ceremonies runs through them all.  Prajapati is
not only the author of the universe, but he upholds and rules it; he is not
only in the gods but in men.  It is said: "Of this Prajapati, half was mortal,
half immortal; with the mortal part of him he feared death." The demons
(Asuras) are also his creatures, and he assigned to them darkness and black
magic.