20-24 septembrie 2009 - Biblioteca Metropolitana Bucuresti

The importance of myths in search of the significanceof the saumikī dīkṣāMADHAVI KOLHATKARDeccan College Post-Graduate and Research Institute – PuṇeIntroductionSaumikī dīkṣā, i.e. initiation or consecration, is the ritual peculiar andexclusive to the Soma sacrifice. It is to make the sacrificer ready or eligiblefor the sacrifice, in which he is first consecrated with water, then anointedwith butter, purified with twenty-one darbha blades and then is led to thesacrificial place, which is considered as womb for him. There he is coveredwith cloth, which is considered to be his ulba ‘membrane’ and then isgiven a black antelope skin to wear upon it, which is considered to be thejarāyu ‘placenta’. He then clenches his fists as the embryo also has the fistsclenched when in the womb. At the end of the sacrifice, for the avabhṛtha‘the concluding bath’, he removes the black antelope skin, but keeps thecloth on, and then enters into water. However, nowhere he is said to beborn again after the embryonic stage 1 .What is the significance of this dīkṣā? Why is it that the sacrificer hasto undergo such embryogenesis, which is peculiar exclusively to this riteonly in the Vedic śrauta ritual? 2 Why is he not born though? This makes1At 34.4 in the AitBr it is said that yajñād u ha vā punar eṣa jāyate yo dīkṣate,but since there is no reference to his taking birth, this sentence has to be interpreted in thesense ‘one who is initiated has become an embryo through the sacrifice’. For the detaileddiscussion regarding the phenomenon of initiation implying a regressus ad uterum pl. seeMircea ELIADE 1963: 79 ff.2The idea of initiation as birth is found elsewhere also. One might immediatelybe reminded of the word dvija and upanayana, regarding which at Atharvaveda (AV)11.7(5).3 it is said: ācārya upanayamāno brahmacāriṇaṁ kurute garbham antaḥtaṁ