Notes from Heesterman - The ancient Indian royal consecration

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Notes

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The king, who is consecrated, not inaugurated, is for the Vedic ritualist nothing
more
than a common sacrificer. It is not the king but the sacrifice on which the attention
is focused. His being practically put on a par with the common sacrificer does,
however, not detract from his royal dignity.
Weber had a biased view of the ritual and thought the king subjugated
by priests.
To the Vedic thinker the whole universe was constantly moving
between the two poles of birth and death, integration and disintegration, ascension and
descent - which by their interaction occasion the cyclical rhythm of
the cosmos. In this world of floating forms
there are no hard and fast lines; conceptually different entities and
notions interchange with bewildering ease. All things, entities, notions,
powers, are connected with each other. Nevertheless, this world is not
the chaos it seems to be at first sight. The point at issue for the Vedic
thinker is not to disentangle and differentiate conceptually different
entities and notions but to realise their connections.
The rajasuya seems to have been originally a yearly repeated rite of
cosmic regeneration and rebirth. This year is ritually marked by the
four-monthly sacrifices (caturmasyas). An alternative way of marking
this year is a year-long dik. The year was generally held to begin in
spring (phlgua or caitra).
Pavitra : introductory 5 day somas ritual comprising agniomas
preceded by a dk day and three upasad days. Three sorts of
stoma used and oain graha offering made as a 16th round that
makes the king all-embracing. Pryaya = proceeding day of a ritual
(so-called because the gods proceeded to heaven). The udayanya is
done at the end (coming down and reaching the earth again).
Anumati and nirti rituals. Anumati (Auspiciousness, Goodwill) and
Nirti (Dissolution, Decay) present themselves in this ii as the two
opposite aspects, auspicious and dangerous, of one and the same
phenomenon.
In the ritual texts anthills are often prescribed for the disposal of
leavings or surpluses of the sacrificial substance.
The rjasyas starts with the ii offerings often including the
grayaa ii comprising three offerings to 1. Indras and agnis 2. the
vivadevas and 3. Somas. Some MS add a fourth for heaven and
earth.
List of offerings and dakins gifts. The Agrayaa is a seasonal offering
connected with the year and bridges the gap between the old and new
year. Even in modern times cakes are made with a mixture of old and
new rice.
The three caturmasyas seem to be just one of the possibilities to fill
out the year preceding the unction festival, the other possibilities
being the sasp offerings or a year-long Soma diksa. In the course of
the fixation process of the rajasuya, however, they became an integral
part of it, doubled by the Soma dika, adding, in the version of Ap. and
Hir., an extra year to the rajasuya.

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In the invervals between the sacrifices Baudh. prescribes the daily

performance of "continuity-rites" (samtani-), to wit alternatively an isti
to Indra the Saviour (Indra Sutraman) and Indra the Releaser from
narrowness, distress (Indra Amhomuc).
In Vedic thought time and space are not differentiated : "the year is
these worlds", "the year is the whole universe.
Keeping in mind the interrelation of ploughing and the sexual act it is
easily seen that the unsrya intended to secure the efficient action
of the powers of fertility throughout the new year, resulting in new
crops and new birth in the animal and human spheres. It was
originally agrarian but was modified by the brahmans as time went on.
indraturiya implies that indras, by virtue of his fourth place, rises
triumphantly above the three worlds. The present writer is under the
impression that numbers have no specific value in themselves. By
virtue of this neutrality they are able to take a great variety of
meanings. In this way a number can give expression to the
interrelation of conceptually different notions and entities. It is, in my
opinion, on this quality that the magic value of a number is based: it is
the symbol summing up an illimitable variety of entities which belong
to different conceptual levels, moulding them into one complex. The
number provides the magic key for mastering all entities united in the
complex. Vedic thought makes this conception of the magic function of
numbers explicit when it stresses the importance of the sampad-, the
numerical congruence of different entities by virtue of which they
coincide. Thus, for instance, the rites connected with the Soma
purchase during the construction of the fire altar provide the number
twelve; as these rites are concerned with Agni, the fire (-altar), this
number is the sampad- connecting Agni with the year (twelve months).
As a further instance we may cite SB. 9, 5, 2, 8 where it is said that a
certain hymn consisting of 7 stanzas makes one reach all that is
sevenfold (the layers of the fire-altar, the seasons, regions, worlds of
the gods, etc.). The essential point is the formation of the number,
rather than its size. In the formation of such a number the outstanding
feature is the principle of the element added to a totality. The three
(or four) cturmsyas are linked to the seasons, the worlds and birth
process.
Somas is the extra element here bringing about regeneration and
continuity. Agni Vaisvanara seems to be essentially concerned with
the processes of fertility. In some stanzas of the RV (RV. 1,59,12;4,5,1.). he is identified with the "tree of life". The epithet Vaisvanara
can quite plausibly be explained as "related to him, who possesses the
total amount of vital strength". Being here, as often, identified with the
year - the twelve potsherds of his cake represent the twelve months of
the year. The sacrificer himself, identified with Vaisvanara, the year
that is Prajapati, propagates himself and is reborn.
The ratnin episode is one of the few parts of the rajasuya that are
directly and exclusively related to kingship.
Caru in milk and ghee on later ii day is self-coagulated, self-churned,
self-liquefied (svayam mrchati, svayam mathyate, svayam vilyate).
A white cow feeding a white calf is milked into a rough (?) skin bag. 1.
This milk then coagulates by itself {svayam murta- 2. The coagulated
milk is then put on some kind of chariot and is driven about so that it
is churned by itself (svayam mathita-); 3. The self-churned butter is
hung in a place in the sun so that it liquefies by itself and becomes
ghee (svayam vilinam djyam).
Brhaspati is often associated with safe birth: he loosens the fetters

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with which Indra was bound when born, he finds the means for untying
Nirrti's fetters, he releases the fetter of death binding the newly-born.
Thus Brhaspati-brahman is the safe basis, the pratistha, on which the
royalty (ksattra-), represented by Mitra, is fastened for firmness, for
not-looseness with a view to its safe birth.
When discussing the ratnin episode we already observed that the king
imitates the sun's
circulation round the parts of the universe. The parallel gains
substance on taking into account Mitra's solar nature. The most
important feature of this engendering process is its self-dependence,
stressed in all the details of the present ii in which the main
implements and materials should be self-produced. The king, equalling
the sun which encompasses and regulates space and time and is
occasionally called svayambhu(VS. 2,20), engenders himself, performing all by himself the cosmic
process of ripening and birth.
The framing of the royal rites in a set of sacrifices (Soma sacrifice,
Marut cake, partha libations) layered like covers round them is not
merely the effect of accumulation devised for greater impressiveness.
This framing has a clear-cut function in the thought of the Vedic
ritualists. It expresses the birth of the sacrificer out of the sacrifice (or
of the brahman power) by virtue of which he realizes his identity with
the cosmos, becomes the
cosmic man (Prajapati). The unction marks the king's (re)birth.
Considering the king's year-long embryonic state as diksita before the
unction and the general character of the rajasuya as a yearly
regeneration rite, it may safely be assumed that they express the idea
of the king's birth out of the year, or after a year-long period of
ripening. The king's year-long diksa is congruent with the year-long
ripening process in the universe, and his unction birth seems,
originally, to have been connected with the ripening of the crops.