Indian Antiquary Vol 48

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 97

JUNE, 1919]
ANCIENT HINDU CORONATION AND ALLIED CEREMONIALS
93
The practice of taking an Oath to protect the people and perform other regal duties existed in the Hindu coronation, as evidenced by the Taittiriya Brahmana, but it disappeared later on. Therefore the similarity of the European and the Indian systems in this respect is not found all along their respective lines of development.
Smearing with unguents in the Indian type may be taken to correspond with anointing in the Western, sprinkling of liquids obtaining greator prominence in the former.
Crowning, blessing for universal dominion, presentation of nobles and officials, jail delivery, stately progress through the metropolis, feast and the devotion of a day or two to a ceremony preliminary to the coronation proper, may also be regarded as points of similarity between the two types.
SECTION II.
Yauvara jyabhisheka. It is in the epic period that we find the first mention of the ceremony for the inauguration of the crown prince. Prof. Goldsticker is doubtful as to whether this ceremony is hinted at in the passage of the 'Aitareya-Bráhmana 11 relating to the 'king-makers' (rajakarttårah) in the chapter on the mahabhisheka. These king-makers' refer, in the AtharvaVeda 13 and the Sata patha-Brahmana+3 to "those who, not themselves kings, aided in the consecration of the king." According to Sâyana's commentary on the aforesaid passage of the Aitareya-Brahmana, the king's father is one of the king-makers, and this was a ground for Prof. Goldstücker's doubt whether the ceremony in which the father took part might be that for the installation of a crown-prince. A closer examination would. however, make it clear that such a doubt is baseless for the following reasons :
(1) The mahâbhisheka is not an independent ceremony, and the chapter devoted to it is meant to bring out that in days of yore, the abhisheka of Indra (called Mahabhisheka) took place on certain lines with certain mantras followed later on by several emperors of antiquity on the occasion of the celehration of the Rå jusuya, and if these rituals and mantras are woven into the Prínarabhisheka (i.e., the second abhisheka, the first having Leen performed at the time of installation to a simple kinyship) of the celebrant of a rajasiya of later times, they will be of great efficacy.
(2) The inclusion of the king's father in the list of king-makers by Sâyana, is not borne out by the Vedic texts themselves.
(3) The presence of the father in any installation ceremony cannot of itself raise the presumption that the son performing the ceremony must needs be a crown-piince, for. first, the father might not at all have been a king, and possessing therefose no kingdom to which he could choose his son as successor; and secondly, he might be retiring from his regal position, making his son a full-fledged king by the ceremony.
(4) The question of installation to crown-princechip cannot at all rise in view of the setting, in which the king-makers are mentioned, namely, the delineation of the rites and formulas of Indra's mahabhisheka intended to be woven into the junarabhisheka of the rájasúya.
41 Aitareya-Brahmana, VIII, 17, 5. 42 Atharva Veda, III, 5, 7.
13 Satapa:ha-Brahmana, III, 4, 1, 7, and XIII, 2, 2, 18. See Profs. Macdonoll and Keith's Vedic Inder, II, p. 210.
* Seu Goldstücker's Sanskrit - English Dictionary, under "Abhisheka", p. 282.