Everything about Agnicayana totally explained
The
Atiratra Agnicayana ("the building up of the fireplace performed over-night") or piling of the
altar of
Agni is a
Śrauta ritual of the
Vedic religion.
The entire ritual takes twelve days to perform, in the course of which a great bird-shaped altar, the
uttaravedi "northern altar" is built out of
10,800 bricks. The liturgical text is in chapters 11 to 18 of the
White Yajurveda; the corresponding exposition of the ritual is in Books 6 to 9 of the
Shatapatha Brahmana.
The ritual emerged from predecessor rituals, which were incorporated as building blocks, around the
10th century BC, and was likely continuously practiced until the late
Vedic period, or the
6th century BC. In post-Vedic times, there were various revivals of the practice, under the
Gupta Empire in the north (ca. 4th to 6th century), and under the
Chola Empire in the south (ca. 9th century), but by the 11th century, the practice was held to have been discontinued. Nevertheless, a continuous tradition has been found to exist among a few
Nambudiri Brahmin families in
Kerala,
South India.
In
1975 Indologist
Frits Staal documented in great detail the performance of an Agnicayana performed by
Nambudiri Brahmins in
Kerala. The last performance before that had been in
1956, and the Nambudiris were concerned that the ritual was threatened by extinction. It had never before been observerd by outsiders. In exchange for a financial participation of the scholars towards the cost of the ritual, the Nambudiris agreed that it should be filmed and recorded. The ritual was performed from 12 to 24 April, 1975. Staal (1989) bases a general analysis of the similarities of
grammar and
ritual on this performance.
After the 1975 Agnicayana, there have been several more Nambudiri performances: in
1990 Agnicayana at
Kundoor, and in
2006.
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