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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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