Blogging on Bloggers 2 : The Vedic rituals, their innovative nature and contribution to the early knowledge by throneoftruth

 The throne of truth  is a very good website . It has many good and informative articles , this is one of them :

There are many allegations against the ancient Vedic rituals or yajnas, that they are useless and contain rather primitive contents such as animal sacrifices, obscene fertility rites etc.
Animal sacrifices, fertility rites etc were not unique to the ancient Vedic culture. We could see them in many parts of the ancient world. Before the civilizations evolved, all of humanity lived as primitive hunter gatherers who hunted animals for food and other needs. Vedic rituals dating back to the bronze age and having it’s roots in further antiquity would obviously contain elements which would be considered primitive or trangressive according to modern notions.
For example Ashavmedha or horse sacrifice involved the chief queen copulating (or at least mimicking the copulation) with the sacrificed horse and Purushamedha or human sacrifice would have also originally involved similar rite, with horse replaced by human victim. Few variations of another ritual named Gosava grants sacrificer the right to answer nature’s call anywhere he wishes and also cohabit with any women including his own mother, sister and women from his own clan, which is otherwise strictly forbidden according to Vedic laws.
These may sound bizarre, but if we look at the details of the rituals, it becomes clear that some aspects of these rituals are quite complicated to perform.
For example in Ashvamedha, the horse is sacrificed only after it is safely returned from all the neighboring kingdoms where it roamed for an year representing the king. If any of the neighboring kingdoms capture the horse, then it is a sign of war. But if the horse returned safely from the neighboring kingdoms, then it would mean that the neighboring kingdoms accepted the supremacy of the king represented by the horse. Thus the ritual could only be conducted by powerful kings. After the horse is returned safely to the hosting kingdom, it is offered to deities. It is said that along with horse, many other animals are also offered in the sacrifice. These animals are enumerated in texts like Vajasaneyi Samhita book 24 of Shukla or White Yajur Veda and Taittiriya Samhita 5.5.11-24 of Krshna or Black Yajur Veda. If we look at the animals in the list, we can see that the it includes tiny ones like flies, bees, worms etc to bigger ones like rhinoceroses, tigers, lions, crocodiles, elephants etc! Though the wild animals in the list are to be released later, all of the victims in the list must be tied to the sacrificial posts or Yupa. This huge list of animals are of course next to impossible to be used in rituals.
In similar lines, Purushamedha also follows same theme with horse replaced by human victim. It also has a list of several other victims who are to be tied in sacrificial posts. These victims are not animals as in Ashvamedha, but humans of various castes, tribes, professions, characteristics etc as numerated in Vajasaneyi Samhita book 30. This large list of victims also appears to be impossible to gather just like the Ashvamedha list, and making Purushamedha an extremely complex rite as well. Texts like Satapatha Brahmana 13.6.2.13 already treats Purushamedha as symbolic sacrifice and even certain hymns of Rig Veda like 5.2.7, 1.24.13 etc echoes the tale of Shunashepa or the boy who was chosen as victim of human sacrifice and was later released by the blessings of deities. This story could be viewed as abandonment of human sacrifice in general. But the human sacrifices continued to exist in post Vedic times, though they were extremely rare.
A ritual named Agnichayana or Athiratra also involved burying the heads of several animals and also a human head on the ground before building the fire altar, which was later replaced with replica heads.
In Gosava ritual, the sacrificer must behave like a bovine by kneeling down to eat and drink, graze on grass etc just like bovines. Though this is just one version of Gosava found in texts like Jaiminiya Brahmana 2.113, while other versions found in texts like Panchavimsha Brahmana 19.13 do not mention any transgressive acts. It is possible that the transgressive version is a modification of simpler version or vice versa. It is also said in Jaiminiya Brahmana that the king Janaka refused to perform the transgressive rite and another king Punyakesha after halting the performance of the rite declared the performance of rite as being limited to old men. The trick here was to limit the performance of this transgressive rite as much as possible, since old men won’t have much potency to perform this extremely complicated rite.
Thus these complicated ritual performances would have been extremely rare and would most likely had modifications and or symbolic performances. The ritual interpretations also varied from one Vedic text to another as mentioned above, so this indicates that the different authors modified and interpreted the rituals.
Vedic rituals are open for modifications and exceptions according to circumstances . For example when Vedic culture expanded from its heartland in north-west India into other regions, the original sacred Soma plant used in rituals was replaced with other plants due to unavailability of the original Soma in new regions where the Vedic culture expanded.
Also according to the tradition, the Vedic rituals are only to be conducted in the lands where krshna mrga or blackbucks live as stated in texts like Manu Smriti 2.23. But when Vedic culture historically expanded beyond India into new regions like south-east Asia, the Vedic rituals were also conducted in these regions. Blackbucks do not live in regions like south-east Asia and they are mostly found in India (though they are facing extinction today). Clearly, here the ritualists made exceptions to the rule which is applied in mainland India or Bharatavarsha and performed Vedic rituals in other regions like south-east Asia
In later periods, the animal sacrifices which are part of many Vedic rituals were also substituted by offerings of grain cakes or purodasha. Shatapatha Brahmana 1.2.3.6-7 narrates a story of how sacrificial essence from humans and animals finally got into grains. Shatapatha Brahmana 1.2.3.5 also states that it is as an animal sacrifice the cake is offered, and Shatapatha Brahmana 1.2.3.8 also associates different characteristics of the cake with that of different parts of animals. Further Taittiriya Brahmana 3.2.8.8 explicitly states that the rice cakes are substitutes of animal victims and Taittiriya Brahmana 3.2.8.9 also associates the cake with the sacrificer himself, hinting at the notion of self sacrifice or the sacrificer offering himself up as the animal victims represented by the cakes.
It is important to note that the method of sacrificing actual animal was also quite sophisticated.
Most of the time It involved suffocating or smothering the victim rather than butchering it as stated in Shatapatha Brahmana 3.8.1.15. Before the victim is sacrificed, the ritualists symbolically asks permission from the victim’s family to sacrifice the victim and makes the victim sacrificially pure as narrated in Shatapatha Brahmana 3.7.4.5,  Taittiriya Brahmana 3.6.6.1 etc. The language used in ritual is also quite toned down, and the victim is stated to be quieted or passed away instead of being killed. While the victim is being sacrificed, the priests would not look at the process either. The sacrificing is done by an assistant called Shamitar.
Also narrated in Shatapatha Brahmana 3.8.1.10, that the sacrifice was not considered as killing at all, since the sacrifice which is a divine act could not be equated with death. After the sacrifice, the sacrificed victim would also be symbolically cleansed and revived as said in Shatapatha Brahmana 3.8.2.4-11.
Thus we see elements of non violence in animal sacrifices, which later led to substitution of animals with cake and other vegetarian offerings. Hence we do not need to view Ahimsa or non violence and vegetarianism as a post Vedic Buddhist or Jain influence, it was a gradual development which happened within the Vedic tradition during later Vedic period. However, many ritualists would have still utilized actual animals in the rituals, while the ones who preferred non violent rituals would have used the substitute offerings.
To sum up, we see an innovation or evolution of practices in the Vedic rituals and modifications or exceptions can be made in the Vedic rituals according to circumstances, but without altering the core performance itself.
Also no matter how primitive may the Vedic rituals may sound, the rituals does have an internal meaning. For example Ashvamedha revolves the sacred horse, who is praised in Rig Veda 1.161-162. This divine horse symbolizes the fertile and ruling power or kshatra and represents the Sun. The queen would embrace the divine horse unto herself as part of the sacrifice and it is clear from texts like Shatapatha Brahmana 13.5.2.2 that this union has a cosmological background since the copulation is said to took place in heaven.
If Ashvamedha revolves about divine horse, then Purushamedha revolves around Purusha Narayana of Purusha Sukta from Rig Veda 10.90. Purusha Narayana represents the whole universe personified and the human victim used in the ritual symbolizes this Purusha.
As for the transgressive rites seen in certain versions of Gosava, these rites technically represents the notion of transcending human limitations, by living like an animal and having total freedom and liberation just like in heaven.
Thus even the so called primitive practices seems to have an internal meaning.
Also in the Vedic sense, the place where the ritual is conducted is viewed as a divine space, for example Rig Veda 1.164.5 states the ritual is the center of the whole world. Whatever done in this divine space which are guided by the Vedic Mantras would be considered as divine, including the so called transgressive acts.
Another thing is that the transgressive practices continued to exist even in post Vedic era when Tantric or Agamic (i.e temple and idol based ) mode of worship evolved. Some of the heterodox Tantric sects practicing the transgressive rites exist even today.
It is also important to note that many of the mainstream orthodox Tantric-Agamic practices are also derived from Vedic ritual practices. For example the pradakshina or parikrama, the circumambulation of temples can be compared to the practice mentioned in Shatapatha Brahmana 9.1.2.6-8 where the ritualist has to circumambulate the fire altar used in Vedic rituals.
The practice of homa or havana, the offerings made in fire altar which is done in many temples are also obviously derived from ancient Vedic fire rituals. Another practice mentioned in Shatapatha Brahmana 1.2.2.13 in which an object is purified using fire can also be compared with later ritual of Arathi.
So many of the later Tantric-Agamic practices which are still practiced widely can also be traced back to ancient Vedic practices.
Apart from this, the ancient Vedic rituals contributed to many of the early knowledge. The calculation and measurement of bricks to build the fire altars of different shapes gave rise to the ancient geometry and mathematics, the observation of stars and seasons to conduct rituals gave rise to astronomy, the speculations surrounding the sacrificial myths, goals, fruits of sacrifices etc gave rise to ancient philosophy, the strict emphasize on the use of Mantras and chanting in Vedic rituals must have given rise to the early linguistic thoughts, the acts, dialogues, dance, music etc which are part of many rituals like Ashvamedha, Mahavrata etc would have contributed to the growth of early theatrical and artistic tradition, the anatomy of sacrificial victims would have contributed to early medicinal tradition and so on.
So before calling rituals as useless or primitive, one must remember about contribution of rituals to the civilization. These ancient rituals are part of our civilization and they must be practiced to express or celebrate the ancient culture and heritage of our civilization.

Yog. 

Blogging on Bloggers: some brilliant posts from Sanscrito e civiltà dell'India the Italian Indology blog by Giacomo Benedetti.

Giacomo Benedetti the indologist who is changing the face of Indology also has some great posts in his Italian blog, here i post few of them with the help of Google Translate.

Nuts and dogs between India and Greece

In the great book by Bernard Sergent  Les Indo-Européens  is also a chapter on the games, which starts from nuts , called "the game far better attested in Indo-European cultures, and with such frequency and such an expansion that can not rest on a common heritage. " It is noted that this was in ancient Greece, Macedonia, India, Iran, at the Germans, in Lydia, in Rome, and that in almost all these peoples had the utmost importance. In Greece, the game is frequently referred in the literature. In Lydia, he attributed the invention: according to Herodotus (I.94), during a famine would the Lydians invented the game of dice, the knuckle, the ball, and so on (all except chess) a day to forget hunger on two. Finally, a party would have emigrated to Italy under the guidance of the Tyrrhenian Sea, to become the Etruscans. 
Located in Rome, continues Sergent, a legend arose the origin of the founder of the city in a game of dice between the priest of Hercules and his God. Among the Germans, Tacitus tells us (Germany 24), we played with such earnestness and perseverance, that when he had lost all that he had, he would like placed their freedom, reducing slaves in case of defeat. Something similar happens to Yudhisthira, the king of the Pandavas in the great Indian epic, Mahābhārata, where in a game of dice he brings into play the kingdom, his brothers,  himself  and his wife (see illustration above ,taken from a Persian manuscript). Again RV. X.34, the famous 'lament of the player' in str.4 mentions the player tied taken away as a slave. In Greece, the game needed to divination, the same at the Balti ancient divination in medical, and an ancient Indian text, without specifying Sergent says, describing an oracle achieved by means of nuts. Even the priests of the Slavic tribe of Retrani were oracles with nuts (and horses). The dice game looks like a game in Macedonia and in the royal Achaemenid Persia, as it was in India, where it was so important that the epochs of history are named after the dice points: Kali, the worst point, gives its name to our degenerate age.  
But what is the meaning of Kali ? The Dictionary of Monier Williams gives as the first just what the 'nut or nut side marked with a dot, the nut loser'. The dictionary poles of the Pali Text Society gives 'the nut unfortunate, unlucky throw a dice, bad luck, demerit, sin, sinful, sinner, saliva, spit'. These meanings in the poles, which was closer to the spoken language than Sanskrit, suggest a concept of bad luck and impurities, which has been identified with the nut loser of the game with walnuts Vibh Ithaca, from the tree Terminalia Bellerica , considered as infested by demons. If we consider that the dice were probably originally used for divination, and that the odd number of 'fate' (including nuts) was associated with bad luck (see here ), this interpretation acquires even more verisimilitude. The term kali can be etymologically traced back to the darkness and impurity: kalana means 'stain, blemish'; Kalanka 'spot, sign, dirt, slander';kaluṣa  'murky, disgusting, unclean, dirty, dirt, impurity and sin' ,  kalka 'dirt, impurity, falsehood, deceit, sin', and, incidentally, also designates the Terminalia Bellerica. A parallel one person you might also find in greek  Kelis  'spot, shame, shame', Latin caligo 'darkness', and calumnia . But the most interesting comparison is with the name given to the score  of the dice down in Latin, or canis or canicula , and in greek, Kyon , which always means 'dog'. He even found a nut, in Taranto, with written ky (on)  instead of either ace, reproduced here.

Now, back in Rgveda if a player was victorious and expert said śvaghnin 'killer of dogs or dog', which, comparing it with the greek-roman language, it could mean that he was able to avoid unlucky shots. Apparently the dog, probably as unfortunate animal was associated with loss in the nuts. In  Satapatha Brahmana XIV.1.1.31  it, along black bird (the crow), is identified with falsehood ( anṛta, the opposite of the RTA , the Truth-Order), with darkness and evil ( pāpman , which also means bad luck or sin). In Taittiriya Brahmana III.4, in the great ritual of horse sacrifice, it requires the killing of a dog 'from the four eyes', as it is explained, the dog is evil ( SVA Go Papma VAT ). What is this dog is discussed in the ' article by David Gordon White 'Dogs Die'. A p.285, note that this is usually explained as a dog with white spots above the eyes.A note to  Satapatha XIII.1.2.9 Brahmana  says, however, that such a dog was just a substitute for a dog with two faces (rare anomaly but not impossible). White, however, also cites a passage of the Avesta about a funeral rite in which you use a dog with four eyes, which according to dictionaries Avesta indicates a dog with two spots above the eyes. The significant thing is that even the hell hounds of Yama have four eyes, as in RV. X.14.10-11 . Perhaps here too it is understood that they have two faces, similar to Cerberus greek? Could confirm the comparison with RV. X.99.6 , where we find a demon 'with six eyes and three heads', a description which is also found in the Avesta, Yn. 9.8, for the dragon A ž the Dahaka. However, there is a strong affinity between Cerberus and the dogs of Yama is recommended, in addition to the role as guardians of the dead, etymology: the greek  Kerberos  is the name of the Vedic one or both dogs:  Sabala , which means 'variegated, spotted, stained'. At first glance, the correspondence may seem dubious, yet we have a number of terms in ancient Indian who approach very closely to the greek term, including karbara , which always means 'variegated, spotted', and is also the name of a demon. A very interesting aspect is that these variants of the same adjective (to be added karvara, karbura, Kavara ) reveal the existence of forms centum next to those, normal to the ancient Indian type  satem (in addition to Sabala, Savala, Sabara and SAVARA ). The thing, however, should not appear unheard of, since even in the language Himalayan Bangani are forms centum . Remarkable that, like other forms centum  in ancient India, it is attested in terms of post-Vedic works or even in lexicons, as if the satemization was a phenomenon typical of the Vedic language, which was closer to Iranian with which it shares this evolution while isolated areas far from the original Vedic region (northwestern India and the Indus valley) may have developed forms centum closer to  proto-indo-european, parallel to the Greek form. Which, for its part, appears to be an archaic residue, now incomprehensible to the Greeks themselves (see here), as handed down the names of the gods.

About archeology, according to a website dedicated to games, the first nut cubic identified dates from the late fifth millennium BC in Syria, which should not be connected with Indo-European civilization. Sergent, who has published the text in 1995, tells us that the earliest dice in the world amounted to Altyn Tepe, Turkmenistan, towards the end of the fourth millennium, but I have not found confirmation of this information. Looking into the network (see here ), the most widespread notion seems to be that Shahr-i-Sokhta, in southeastern Iran (Seistan) and the site of the discovery of the earliest dice, attributed to 3000 BC (but this does not seem to have precise references) and cubic (see here ). At the same site, they found dice with rectangular pieces and chessboard, in a tomb of the period III (2500-2300 BC), as reported in the book Vidale, already mentioned in another post ,  on the east of Sumer , pp.94- 95.

 Even in the Harappan sites are located in both cubic dice (such as those in the picture above) and rectangular with sides numbered 4, and the rectangular type also appears to Gonur Depe in Margiana (see here ), in the period Namazga V (2500-2000 BC ), where they are considered as imports from the Indus civilization. It's interesting that the Harappan cubical dice have two variants (as reported in this book ): some have, unlike our, 6 opposed to 5, and 1, as can be seen also in the picture, but another one of those Harappa has the numbering as modern ones, and (in part) greek-Roman. 
A Swedish study also shows the frequency of these items: a discovery out of ten at Mohenjo-daro is linked to games, and with a spatial distribution that suggests places dedicated, those who were called in India historic Sabhā . 

So it seems that the area between Turkmenistan, Seistan and India, we have plenty of dice in very old age, which may agree with the importance given to this game from the Indo-Europeans, known as Sergent. He also notes that in Scotland the dice were found in levels of the Bronze Age, and independently of influence from Greek or Roman. According to another French scholar,Thierry Depaulis ,oblong nuts are located at Indians, Celts and Germans, at least the Greeks and Romans. Where have inherited Celts and the Germans this game? Perhaps Central Asia itself, from which they came originally? These details, especially if you enter into an ideology shared, as shown Sergent, can reveal stories of far-reaching. The game is still on ... 

yog

Spoked wheels to the Indo-Iranian borders in the third millennium BC

In Rome, not far from Termini Station there is a beautiful museum, the Museo Nazionale d'Arte Orientale 'Giuseppe Tucci' ( http://museorientale.beniculturali.it/ ) that houses, among other things, a large collection of objects Archaeological excavations at Shahr-i Sokhta , the 'Burnt City', an important site in eastern Iran on the Helmand River, on the border with Pakistan and Afghanistan, discovered by Maurizio Tosi and dating back to the Bronze Age (from 3200 BC). I had already mentioned about the nuts particularly ancient discovered there, and here I show an image of a dice with pieces that I was able to photograph in the museum:

I:

But the object that struck me most in the collection (not for the aesthetic value) you can see in this display case.

To the right, there is a wheel with spokes, not precisely dated, but certainly earlier than 2200 BC, and previous to the famous spoked wheels of Sintashta , and probably contemporary with the similar toy wheels with spokes of the Harappan civilization have already been discussed in a previous post . This fact, which seems to escape the knowledge disseminated in this regard (see eg.  here  and the bookof Anthony), may be further evidence that the spoked wheels were invented between India and Iran in the third millennium BC, and then exported to Sintashta and other areas of Eurasia at the turn of the third and second millennium BC

And then, the supposed arrival of the Aryans with their chariots and horses from the Eurasian steppes to India and Iran would prove not only once more a myth, but a reversal of history (of similar reversals, and Sintashta like receptor pulse from Central Asia South Asia, if not actual colony Bactrian Bronze Age, see the last post in New Indology).

Also note the zebu left: animals of South Asian descent, already domesticated in the Neolithic Mehrgarh, spread in Central Asia at least at that time, reaching Azerbaijan, Mesopotamia, Anatolia, and perhaps the Ukraine ( see this other post of New Indology).

yog
Edited on 05.08.2013