by Roopa Pai
At the end of the year, if the stallion returned unchallenged, the king would declare himself supreme ruler of all the lands his horse had passed through. His queens would then beg the horse’s forgiveness (because he was about to be sacrificed – sad but true). In the grand culmination of the yagna, the ashwa would become the medha for the gods.
In the Ramayana, years after he had sent Sita away to the forest, Rama performed the Ashwamedha Yagna. Since the yagna required the queen to be present, and since Rama had never stopped thinking of her as his beloved, his wife and his queen, he got a statue of her cast in gold and had it stand in for her. The consecrated horse was set free to roam where it willed, and no one dared to stop it. Until two young challengers at the forest hermitage of sage Valmiki not only captured the horse but also took on Rama’s soldiers with such great skill and valour, defeating all of Rama’s brothers one by one, that Rama himself was forced to finally intervene.
Can you recall the young challengers’ names, and their identities?
Ans: The twins Lava and Kusha, who were Rama and Sita’s sons.
The Rajasuya – This was an elaborate yagna performed, once again, to establish that a king (let’s call him King X) was indeed the single and unchallenged big boss of his kingdom. To kick off proceedings, invitations to the Rajasuya Yagna were sent out to a whole lot of kings, princes and chieftains, both inside and outside the kingdom. If a king accepted the invitation and attended the yagna, it meant that he had accepted King X as his ruler and would henceforth be loyal to him.
As long as the yagna fire burned, King X was treated not like a king but a demigod. There were various fun activities that he was involved in too – like a chariot drive-by, a display of his (hopefully decent) archery skills, a cattle raid (which tested his skill and strategy at stealing other people’s cows) and a game of dice.
In the Mahabharata, after Yudhishthira was crowned king at his glittering new capital city, Indraprastha, he performed the Rajasuya Yagna. Hundreds of kings from all over attended, accepting him as their overlord. The Kauravas attended not as guests, but as the Pandavas’ fellow-hosts, while Krishna was given the status of Most Honoured Guest. This made another guest, the king of Chedi, furious. This king had hated Krishna ever since the latter had carried away Rukmini, who had been betrothed to him (not Krishna’s fault, really, Rukmini had begged him to carry her away). He began to insult Krishna publicly and viciously, and got his head taken off with Krishna’s chakra for his pains. What was this king’s name? (Ans: Shishupala.)
The Soma – Unlike the other two yagnas, the Soma Yagna was nobler, meant for the welfare of humanity. There was no horse involved, but there was, expectedly, a tonne of soma. The soma offered in such copious quantities was believed to strengthen and rejuvenate the gods and put them in a good mood, and the yagna itself was meant to cleanse the air of toxins and pollutants. Whichever way you looked at it, therefore, health, happiness and prosperity for all was guaranteed.
While no one has performed the Ashwamedha or Rajasuya yagnas in a long, long time, the Soma Yagna continues to be performed in India. According to Wikipedia, the most recent large-scale Soma Yagna was performed in Gujarat as recently as 2017!
LESSONS FROM THE VEDAS
RITUALS ARE IMPORTANT. THE YAGNA IS IMPORTANT. IGNORE THEM AT YOUR PERIL.
When the title is so dire, subtitles are superfluous
Yeah, yeah, we know. The very word ‘ritual’ sounds unfashionably old, smells of mothballs, feels like sweat and uncomfortable clothes and mumbling around a fire, and smacks of blind faith. Rituals are certainly not the kind of thing a modern and secular young person might want to associate himself or herself with.
But what is a ritual, anyway? The dictionary defines it as ‘a religious or solemn ceremony consisting of a series of actions performed according to a prescribed order.’ Which is exactly what the Vedic rituals were, and exactly the kind of ritual you were thinking about. But here’s another definition from the same dictionary – ‘a series of actions or type of behaviour regularly and invariably followed by someone.’ These were the kinds of rituals recommended by the Upanishads – rituals like reflecting on things before arriving at a decision, for instance, questioning everything, looking beyond the differences on the outside to the sameness on the inside. But they recommended that you perform these rituals religiously, i.e., with the kind of rigour and fervour that is normally associated with religion. Because rituals can be important!
All of us have several rituals that we follow as individuals. Brushing our teeth first thing in the morning. Going out for lunch and a movie with friends on the last day of the exams. Wearing a particular T-shirt while watching a match because that’s what we wore the last time our team won. Not doing our homework until the morning of the day when it is due. You get the drift.
Families have rituals too – the long visit to the grandparents in the summer vacations, the annual Diwali party, Wednesday night FaceTime with a sibling who is away at college, and so on. Why, even countries have rituals – the hoisting of the national flag on Independence Day, for instance.
Do you consider these kinds of rituals important? Of course you do! Why? Is it simply that, because they are so predictable and repetitive, you derive a certain comfort from performing rituals, a feeling that no matter how chaotic the world around you is, you can always depend on this constant? Is it because they make you feel less alone, and part of something bigger than yourself – a family, a community, a country? Is it because they force you to press the pause button on life, no matter how awful (or fabulous!) it seems at that moment, to do something that you have decided is non-negotiable – taking your dog for a walk, giving your granddad his medicine, going out to play?
It is for the very same reasons that religious rituals are important to the people who follow them.
But there are even more important, if less obvious, benefits of following rituals. The act of doing something over and over again without questioning it is the necessary first step towards building willpower, focus and discipline, all of which are among the toughest qualities to cultivate, as also among the most rewarding. A disciplined, focused person who can say ‘No’ to distractions and temptations with conviction is a person who is more likely to be successful in whatever his or her aim is.
Sure, rituals can often seem utterly mindless, even pointless, especially as your body and mind begin to do them on auto-pilot, whether it is chanting mantras or reciting the 12-19 times tables each morning or going for swimming coaching five times a week. But without having gone through these rituals, without knowing whether they work or not for you and in what ways, you have no way of progressing, of getting beyond them. How can you be sure that swimming is not for you unless you have committed to the coaching for a decent period of time? How do you know that mugging your tables is no use until you’ve felt the high of finishing your maths exam fifteen minutes earlier than everyone else?
See? Even rituals that seem mindless can be powerful. And it is precisely because rituals can be so potent that it is important to pick the right ones. After all, any ritual eventually becomes a habit, and bad habits are horrendously difficult to break.
As an exercise, why not sit down by yourself tonight and make a list of your daily ‘rituals’. Make sure not to leave out even those that you perform only in your head, like that little ritual where you tell yourself that you hate a particular classmate, or that you will never, ever be good at studies. When you’re done, ask yourself two questions about each one – 1. ‘Is this ritual ethical?’ (i.e., Am I sure it is not hurting anyone, including me? Am I sure it is fair to everyone involved?) and (2) ‘Does this ritual benefit anyone?’ If your answer to both questions is yes, the ritual, however annoying, is worth doing. If not, either let the ritual go or re-examine it to see how it can be changed for the better.
The sages of the Upanishads, who called out some of the Vedic rituals and exhorted people to see beyond their literal meanings, asked themselves
the same questions. And when the answers came out as ‘no’, they were not afraid to drop those rituals, even though they realized that all change came at a price.
Neither should you. Be ruthless about nixing the rituals that aren’t healthy for you or the people around you, and replacing them with those that are. Of course there will be sacrifices involved – if you want to replace the ritual of waking up just in time for the school bus with the ritual of getting out of bed forty-five minutes earlier, for instance, it’s goodbye to that much zzz-time – but don’t let that deter you.
Instead, look at every good ritual that you bring into your life as a sacrifice you offer to the universe. Every time you muster up the courage to call out your own toxic rituals, you sacrifice your old, not-so-great self and replace it with a new, better one.
That is the real yagna, the real sacrifice – and you will find that it is the one that counts.
५
A FEAST OF HYMNS
A selection of hymns from the granddaddy of the Vedas
As you now know, there are thousands and thousands of suktas, or hymns, in the body of ancient sacred literature called the Vedas. And that’s even if you consider just the first section of the Vedas, what we have earlier called the ‘real’ Vedas, i.e., the Samhitas. Since there is no way that the one small book you are holding just now can introduce you to all those suktas, here is a selection instead. Alternately lyrical, deeply philosophical and fabulously imaginative, all these suktas are taken from the Rig Veda Samhita, the oldest and largest of them all.
Now, what are the hymns of the Rig Veda about? Well, mostly about the Arya gods. More hymns in the Rig Veda – 289 to be precise – are addressed to Indra, the Lord of Heaven and the god of the rain and the storm, than to any other. There are also a substantial number addressed to Agni and Soma.
And while the hymns to their gods are beautiful, and full of wonder and praise, there are other hymns in the Rig that are far more interesting. Mostly, these hymns are from the Mandalas (sections) that bookend the text – Mandala 1 and Mandala 10 – which are believed to have been added later. There are stories there about how the universe was created, prayers to the horse that was sacrificed and eaten as part of the famous Ashwamedha yagna, funeral chants, powerful mantras, and spells against rivals, bad dreams and insomnia.
The nine hymns featured here are a mix of these, and have been very loosely translated - they are simply meant to give you a sense of what they are about. Do look elsewhere for a more faithful and complete translation.
THE VERY FIRST HYMN
Quite naturally, the first hymn of the first Mandala of what is probably the world’s oldest religious text that is still in use is pretty special. Surprisingly, however, it is not dedicated to the Arya’s chief god, Indra, but to Agni! (Here’s some trivia: so is the very last hymn of the last Mandala.) Agni is also the first word of the first hymn, and thus the word that the Rig Veda opens with.
The Fire Hymn
Agni Sukta – 1.1*
O Agni, Lord of the Sacrifice, I pray to you!
You before whom the ancients bowed, the one we adore –
Summon the gods to our feast!
Beloved priest, who ensures the success of our sacrifice
And bestows prosperity and courage and heroic sons –
Bring the gods to our feast!
Radiant One, who are true and effulgent and glorious
To whom we bring our prayers, day after day –
Come to our feast!
Agni, the Lord of Fire
Come to us easily, lovingly, like a father comes to his son,
Come, bringing us joy; bless us so we may prosper –
Come!
*The key to the numbering of the hymns is straightforward enough. The first number tells you which Mandala the hymn is taken from, and the second, which particular hymn it is within that Mandala. Sometimes, you will find a third number – that indicates a particular verse in the hymn being referenced by the first two numbers. If you want to explore the original hymns in Sanskrit, you can find your way to them in translations quite easily using these numbers.
THE STORY OF HOW THE WORLD WAS BORN
• These are my principles. If you don’t like them, I have others. – American comedian Groucho Marx
• This is my creation myth. If you don’t like it, I have others. – The composers of the Rig Veda
Every culture and every religion in the world has its own belief system about how the universe was born, and how man and his fellow creatures came to be. All creation myths are set in a vague time period in the past – usually referred to as ‘In the beginning’, or ‘At that time’ or simply, ‘Then’. They each carry in them certain truths and world views that are dear to the cultures that tell the stories, and the hopes and beliefs of the society that created them.
Creation myths also hugely impact and influence the way people in those societies see themselves in relation to the universe. Understanding a culture’s creation myths can help you understand why the people of that culture behave the way they do. Do people believe, for instance, that everything in our universe is a product of intelligent design, that it was the Great Designer in the sky who created it, or do they believe that the universe began with a Big Bang? Do they believe that humans are the most superior of all species, with a divine charter to rule the world, or do they see all the world’s creatures as interconnected and coming from one single source of primordial energy? Do they see creation’s timeline as a, well, line, with a beginning of the world and an end of the world, or do they see it as a cycle, in which everything that has been, will be again? You see how each of these beliefs can make people live their lives very differently? That’s the power of creation myths!
Many early stories and myths travelled between places and people. This is one reason that many cultures have similar stories of creation, although each is tweaked a little to suit that particular culture. The most popular kinds of creation myths include ones in which:
• creation proceeds from the thought, word or dream of a divine being; He, She or It creates the universe ex nihilo (cool-sounding Latin phrase meaning ‘out of nothing’), i.e., it is not fashioned out of some pre-existing raw material. Christian, Islamic and Jewish mythologies feature this kind of creation myth.
• creation results from the dismemberment (the action of cutting off the limbs of a person or animal; no, seriously!) of a primordial being. (Primordial sounds like a scary word but isn’t. It just means something ‘that existed at the beginning of time’.) Different parts of the being then become different parts of the cosmos. This kind of creation myth exists in Babylonian and Norse mythology, to name only two.
• creation happens by the hatching of the cosmic egg. This hugely popular creation story is found in Egyptian, Greek, Finnish, Polynesian, Chinese, Norse and many other mythologies.
• creation begins with God sending a bird or an amphibian, the earth diver, to plunge into the waters of the primordial ocean to bring up mud from the bottom, using which land is created. This myth is popular with the Native Americans, the Russian Tatars, the Siberian Yukaghirs, among others.
Needless to say, our Arya had their own creation myths as well. Their attitude to it, however, was – ‘Why settle for one creation myth when you can have several?’ The good thing about this kind of approach was that it kept the debate open – after all, new data could turn up any time that proved or disproved one or more of your myths! More seriously, though, this variety of creation myths can be seen as proof of the Arya’s great humility in the face of the awesome, wondrous universe that sustained and nourished them. These guys, like few others, were not too arrogant, too afraid or too embarrassed to shrug and say, ‘We think this may be the way it happened, or this, or this, but tbh, we don’t know.’
Here are four of the Arya creation myths, each presented as a hymn in the Rig Veda.
I.THE ‘THE-EGG-CAME-FIRST’ STORY
A ‘cosmic egg’ creatio
n myth
Probably the most popular one of all, this story is about a golden egg – ‘Hiranyagarbha’ in Sanskrit – that rose out of the deep dark of the all-encompassing floodwaters, containing the seed of everything in the universe. The heat of the fiery seed caused the egg to split – the top half of the shell became the sky, the bottom half the earth, and both were - and are - held in place by the Supreme Being, an all-pervading energy who himself became the atmosphere, the space between the earth and the sky.
Although most cultures believe in the concept of a primordial ocean, Hindus have a very particular understanding of ‘the waters’. They associate it with the all-consuming flood, MahaPralaya, which causes the dissolution of the universe at regular intervals (each interval is about 311 trillion years long, so you can rest easy!). Once the Great Dissolution has occurred, creation must begin all over again. It is in the depths of the MahaPralaya floodwaters that Hiranyagarbha is believed to arise.
Now let’s get to the hymn itself. Translating an ancient version of a language can be very difficult, particularly because there is no way to tell what some words meant in the context of the civilization that produced it. One of the biggest debates among translators of this hymn is whether a question mark should be placed after the repeating line – ‘Who is the god we worship through our offerings’ – or not. It makes sense both ways, but the meaning is quite different in each case. If you read the line as a question, it sounds as if the Arya did not know who he was; if you read it as a statement, they sound almost smug in their certainty of his identity. At the end of the hymn, they give him a name – Prajapati, Lord of All Creatures.
Stanza 4 in the translation below says that the floodwaters and the egg came from Prajapati (by which you deduce that the egg was outside of Prajapati), but it also says that Prajapati was inside the egg! Eh?