The fire of the gods

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http://www.the-week.com/23apr27/life9.htm

 

The fire of the gods- A vedic tradition is relived

By Darshan Manakkal

Smart bombs continued to rain on Baghdad in the seemingly

mindless war. An unbridled virus scourged entire nations.

Meanwhile in Kerala, a 3,000-year-old vedic tradition, the

somayaga, came alive for the first time this millennium with the

noble aim of bringing about universal peace and

prosperity.

 

Conducted by Vaidikan Thaikkat Neelakantan Nambudiri at

Brahmaswom Madhom in Thrissur from April 6 to 12, the somayaga

was a reaffirmation of the vedic belief that each one of us is a

part of a greater cosmos. Even as embers began to glow in a fire

that was lit by rubbing wood, arcane chants rent the air. These

four or five-line verses were invocations to the forces of

nature-the sun, fire, wind, dawn and rain.

 

APPEASING AGNI: The chief priest makes an offering; the last

rites (above left)Drawn by its mysticism, people queued up to

watch the somayaga, a tradition that is older than Buddhism or

even Hinduism. Some came to worship a deity that wasn't there.

Others came to experience the 'cosmic energy'. Film stars,

politicians, godmen, historians, scientists, professors of vedic

studies and anthropologists from the world over were all there

to watch a group of priests try and connect with the immanent

supreme being. By day three of the yagna, 75,000 visitors had

showed up.

 

Prominent among the western authorities present was Frits Staal,

professor of indology at Berkeley University, California, and

author of Agni, a comprehensive chronicle of yagnas. For him,

the yagna's ancient roots and near-immaculate preservation made

it a storehouse of information on a time when written scripts

had not yet evolved. He says, "When you hear a Beethoven

symphony you tend to think-this is about the liberation of the

world, about the fall of Napoleon. Ask a violinist, and for him

the symphony is merely a sheet of musical notes. The same is

true for a yagna. The priests themselves do not understand

terms like cosmic consciousness. The precision and geometry

involved is for the sake of preserving tradition and is a

considerable intellectual achievement."Rituals like the

somayaga and the athiraathram (another kind of yagna) conducted

in Kerala are exclusive to the priestly Nambudiri caste. Ask

Staal if the yagna is an effort to reassert Brahmin supremacy

and he says, "No. This is not an issue of caste. I tend to

liken the yagna to work at an aerodrome. These people are

experts and are not to be disturbed. Hence the

exclusivity."

 

Performed after 19 years (the last one was held in

Thiruvanantha-puram), the rituals within somayaga are intricate

nd the insistence on detail is remarkable. Take for example

the ritual pravargyam, which very simply means the boiling of

milk. At a more metaphysical level it is likened to the

yajamaanan's (chief priest) head. The belief is that the

yajamaanan's head was accidentally cut off during a yagna and

restored only through the intervention of the gods. Pravargyam

is essentially a reliving of this process and hence considered

too brutal for women to watch.

 

Mud, iron powder and the hair of a goat are mixed with milk.

These are then boiled with ghee in a bowl. Throughout the

ritual, the yajamaanan, Bhatti Puthillath Ramanujan Nambudiri,

was not at liberty to laugh, scratch his body, fan himself, or

take off his deer-skin bag. Try and imagine such obsession for

detail and you will probably understand the magnitude of

symbolism in the yagna.

 

In a final act of symbolism the entire structure sheltering the

altars of the yagna was burnt in submission to the cyclic karmic

concept. As the yagna ended with flames leaping up to the sky,

people chanted the official slogan of the yagna, a reassertion

of its unselfish nature: Idam na mama-this is not for me.

 

 

 

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