The Fire and the Image
The Fire and the Image
Lesson 28 stated the debt: "The older Vedic ritual system is śrauta sacrifice … Pūjā has a different shape, a guest received in a house, and the shift from one to the other is one of the large changes in Indian religious history." It then said no ritual manual had been opened. This lesson opens one.
The pair of terms repays attention, because the two words are not parallel.
Śrauta is glossed by the lexicon as relating to the ear or hearing; then to be heard, audible, expressed in words or in plain language; then relating to sacred tradition, prescribed by or founded on or conformable to the Veda; then simply sacrificial.
Month 1
The Fire and the Image
Month 2 · Lesson 43. Lesson 28 named this as one of the large changes in Indian religious history and did not work it. Here it is: a ritual system with no image, requiring a team of specialists — and why the four Vedas turn out to be four priests' books for one rite.
5 min
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