31. Some Notes on the Vcdic Sacrifices. 



By Bhaves Chandra Banerji, M.A. (Research Scholar), 



Sanskrit College, 



General Remarks. 



Sacrifice seems to have been the chief, nay the only religious 

 rite practised by the Vedic Aryans, and they performed it most 

 diligently, not only with a spiritual object, wamely the attainment 

 of a happy hereafter, in some distant region of eternal bliss, the 

 abode of the gods, but also with secular motives, ms., to have 

 an abundance of food and cattle, a perpetual posterity and a 

 complete victory over their rivals and enemies. Indeed, these 

 three worldy objects were the incentives to all their sacrifices. 



Fire was the principal elemental deity — Devata — of the an- 

 cient Aryans, to whom they offered their sacrificial materials and 

 through whom only the offerings were to be carried to the other 

 Devatas, whom they propitiated for fulfilling their multifarious 

 desires. 



The idea of the ritualists was that every minor function in a 

 sacrifice (e.g., the beating of the corn, in order to separate it from 

 the chaff, the grinding of the grain, etc.) produces an unseen spiri- 

 tual effect known by the technical term Apnrva ; and there is a 

 gradation in the intensity or quantity of the Apnrva in jprojporti&n to 

 the extent or dttration of the action. Thus the entire action pro- 

 duces the highest and ultimate Apurva, which is the sum total 

 of all the minor Apurvas. When the sacrifice is completed the 

 Apurva remains and secures the desired object {e.g. Heaven) for 

 the sacrificer after his death. This is the way in which the spiri- 

 tual results of the sacrifices are attained. 



Classification. 



I shall try to give an idea of the various classes into which 

 sacrifices have been divided by the Vedic sages. 



(1) They have been classified according to their materials 

 of oblation under three heads, namely — (a) Havirjajiia or sacrifice 

 with corn, (&) P^kayajna or sacrifice with cooked materials, (c) 

 Somayajna or sacrifice with Soma plants. 



(a) The sacrifices performed with corn as the principal mate- 

 rial are called Haviryajfia. The Dar^apurnaraasa or the new 

 and full moon sacrifices are the typical forms of such sacrifices. 

 There are five other such Haviryajnas. 



(&) Those in which cooked materials are offered are called 

 P^kayajuas, viz.^ the Parvana, etc. These are seven \\i uumbey, 



