Satapatha Bramhana Part 03

SR No.: 007679
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Julius Eggeling
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1894
Total Pages: 2382
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 45 MB

Page 1763

xxxviii
SATAPATHA-BRAHMANA.
course to be commonly sacrificed in later times. Now as regards the heads of the five victims, the author subsequently (VI, 2, 1, 37 seqq.) makes some further remarks which go far to show that his previous statements referred only to the traditional practice which, however, was no longer in use in his own day, and had probably not been so for generations past. He mentions various expedients adopted by some priests with a view to keeping up at least some semblance of the old custom, - viz. either by procuring real heads from some source or other, or by using heads made of gold or clay ; but they are summarily dismissed as profane and fraudulent counterfeits; and the author then remarks somewhat vaguely and diplomatically that one may slay those five victims as far as one may be able (or inclined) to do so, for Pragâpati was the first to slaughter them, and Syâparna Sâyakåyana the last, and in the interval also people used to slaughter them; but at the present day people slaughter only (one of) those two, the (he-goat) for Pragâpati, and the one for Vayu;' after which he proceeds to explain in detail the practice then in ordinary use. Later on (VII, 5, 2, 1 seqq.), the Brâhmana expounds in the usual way the formulas used in the traditional, and theoretically still available procedure, though in the actual performance perhaps only the formulas relating to the particular heads ? used would be muttered.
While Yâgñavalkya thus, at least in theory, deals rather cautiously with this feature of the traditional custom, the theologians of the Black Yagus : take up a somewhat bolder position. Indeed it is evidently against this older school of ritualists that some of the censure of our Brâhmana is directed. For though they too allow, as an alternative practice, the use of a complete set of five heads, they make
1 This doubtless is what is meant (cf. Kâty. XVI, 1, 38); and atha' at the beginning of VI, 2, 2, 6 ought accordingly to have been taken in the rather unusual sense of or' (? or rather), instead of then.' Cf. VI, 2, 2, 15.
• According to Âp. Sr. XVI, 17, 19–20, however, even if there is only one bead (that of Vayu's he-goat) all the formulas are to be pronounced over it.
The Maitr. Samhita, however, does not scem to refer to this particular point in its Brahmana sections.
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