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creator god, sees in himself a golden germ (hiranya-garbha), as it were. Similarly, Queen Māyā beholds the Bodhisatta in her womb. Besides, the Vrātya appears as a form of manifestation of the god Rudra, 15 who is later euphemistically called Siva and is given the epithet Mahadeva as well. Moreover, the Vrātya has close relations with the Pravargya in other respects. 46
As is well-known, the Mahādeva worshippers belonged to an older Aryan wave of invaders who had penetrated into eastern India before the vedic brahmins. We first hear of them in AV 15, but after that only sporadically in literature up to the Mbh. Then they disappear from literary, i.e. brahmanical, tradition. But first they leave clear traces in two religions appearing in Magadha centuries later: Jainism and Buddhism, which borrowed from the Vrātyas, e.g. the title arhant for the person liberated"7 and the designation gana for a group of monks. 18 For the fact that the vedic Aryans evidently could communicate with them shows already that the Vrātyas were Aryans - a point which was formerly often denied.49 Otherwise, the latter would have called the former mlecchas, the special importance of the language in accepting strangers in India having been shown by Romilā Thāpar in a recent lecture in Heidelberg.50
Vagrant life as almsmen at times other than the rainy season may also belong to the above traces,51 gifts of food, etc. to monks, which are rather a kind of daksinā (i.e., passing on or redeeming the guilt the yajamāna had incurred by the killing of the sacrificial victim) than alms. Besides, this notion still lives on in the minds of the Siamese, for, at the Loi Krathong, a festival celebrated especially in Chieng Mai in November, play-boats (krathong) made of banana leaves and holding a light, flowers and money are made to flow downstream. At some distance poor people are allowed to land them and take the money, yet with that also the sender's/donator's Evil (pāpman), represented by the money. Further, just as one is a Vrātya at a particular period of one's life and sets out on a predatory expedition, Buddhist boys, especially in Siam, go and live for some time in a monastery, following regular
44 AV 15,1,2. 45 See, e.g. Shrinivas 1983: 543-556. 16 The Mahāvīra vessel is covered with a gold plate and stands on a silver plate,
between heaven and carth, as it were. The Vrātya wears a couple of such plates as a necklace (sce Hauer 1927: 129). Van Buitenen apparently was not acquainted
with Hauer's remarks. 47 Hauer, Ibid., 202. 18 Sec Bollée 1981: 184. 19 For the Vrätyas in ancient literature see Heesterman 1962: 1-37. 50R. Thāpar 1991: forthcoming. 51 Cf. Hopkins 1909: 32.