Great Indian Religion

Author(s): G T Bettany
Publisher: Ward Lock Bowden and Co

Page 36

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THE EARLY VEDIC RELIGION. the vow! May I be equal to it, may I succeed in it!' For Agni is Lord of Vows to the gods, and it is to him therefore that he addresses these words.” As to the
fasting, it is contended that the essence of the Fasting.
mg. vow consists in fasting; for the gods see through the mind of man, and when he takes the vow they know that he means to sacrifice to them next morning, and betake theinselves to his house. It would then be unbecoming in him to take food before they have eaten, and he may only eat what is not offered in sacrifice, which must be only what grows in the forest.
Every night and morning a burnt-offering of fresh milk had to be made to Agni, and on the morning of the sacrificial day, the householder chose his Brahman or superintending priest, an official who now becomes prominentthis class having indeed been no doubt the originator of the modern Brahmans. Then follows a most complex series of directions and explanations as to the various offerings.
Equally elaborate are the directions given for the ceremony of establishing sacrificial fires by a young houseEstablish
blish. holder. Four officiators were required besides ment of the sacrificer; they erected two sheds or firesacrificial houses by strict rules, and the fire was to be
produced afresh by friction, or from certain definite sources, and placed upon the carefully purified fire-place. Towards sunset the sacrificer invoked the gods and ancestors thus: “Gods, fathers, fathers, gods! I sacrifice, being whom I am; neither will I exclude him whose I am; mine own shall be the offering, mine own the toiling, mine own the sacrifice!" He and his wife then entered the respective houses, and received with various ceremonies two pieces of wood specially prepared for reproducing the sacred fire the next morning. The offerings which followed were chiefly of rice and clarified butter. Later the sacrificer, having honoured the priests by washing their feet and giving them perfumes, etc., and given to each his share, invited them to eat. The Soma ceremony, according to the Brahmanas, is still more developed, but it is quite impossible to compress an account of it into a short space.
fires.