DDK HistoryF.p65 - CSIR

132 PROFITS FROM VEDIC RITUAL [5.7
lunacy, but the particular 1 form inwhich it was expressed was taken
seriously, because it was familiar in clan observances. We have other
vratas in the Pali : those of a bat, a goat, an elephant, being then taken to
be ascetic practices in imitation of these animals, like that of Acela with the
dog. The same word, however, is used as late as the 7th century A. D.
by the poet Bana, who describes his ancestors of the Vatsyayana gotra as
followers of the kukkuta (cock) vrata ; 13 one of the commentators
points out that vrata also means an article of (ritual) diet. The double
meaning was essential for Bana’s purpose.
5.7. We have thus come to parallels of the observations given in the
second chapter of this book, showing a survival of primitive elements next
to an advancing society. This feature characterizes Indian society at all
times. There was plenty of room to expand, which meant a vaster scale
with far slower pace of advance to full civilization. Special brahmin clans
like the Kasyapa and Bhrgus took prominent part in the process of assimilation,
but brahmins in general followed suit. Many of them had normally
to go from U.P. to Taxila 14 or the frontier (BrUp. 3.3.1 : 3.7.1)
to learn their main business, the fire-sacrifice. By the time of the Mbh.
recensions, the Madra country where these brahmins went to study
appears barbarous : a long passage written into the Mbh. to explain
why the un-Aryan bride-price was paid among the Madra people has
now been stripped off by text-criticism. Sometimes the brahmins are
reduced to helplessness when asked by ksatriyas to explain the
sacrifice, or Brahma (a new divine ideal). They then learn from these
ksatriyas as humble disciples e.g. from Prava-hana Jaivali (ChUp. 5.3 ;
1.8 ; BrUp. 6.2), Asvapati Kaikeya (ChUp. 5.11-12) or king Janaka
(SB. 11.6.2 etc.). This shows that the older brahmin tradition in the
Gangetic basin could not have been of the Aryan sacrifice, but was
something else ; perhaps secret lore from the Indus valley or from
tribal medicine-men, or both.
That performance of the vedic ritual paid very well on occasion
follows from gifts of entire villages to brahmin priests as fees at the
sacrifice.The Kosalan king Pasenadi had endowed the brahmin
Pauskarasadi with the village of Ukkattha (DN. 3) : the brahmin
Lohicca with Salavatika (DN. 12).