Vedic Ritual Laboratory: Solution with Universal Effect

Abstract

        .  The foundation of priestly duties in Vedic society was to attract god's attention to people and, thus, to assure the formers that people followed the rules of Ṛta. The composers of Ṛgveda considered Agni as the most ancient priest, clearing the sacrifice from its initial dark impurity. On behalf of people, that action was assisted by:

• A hotar priest, who poured the material sacrifice into the fire,
• A brahman priest, who helped to "lift" the sacrifice with his thought and to "direct" it to the desired direction, and also
• An upavaktar priest, who sang along to the fire.

There was also a special priest, who "helped" the fire to light up - agnidhra or agnimidhra.

The material component of the sacrifice was "ordered" by the Soma god. He was assisted by the potar priest, who cleared the prepared liquid (soma), and by an adhvaryu priest, who made oblation of soma, and some other ritual actions. All the mentioned realities give us full reason to conclude, that Vedic people invented quite complex and developed system of cooperation of different participants of ritual. Regarding the aims of the ritual, we can definitely consider the proposed model as the very early idea of multifunctional cooperation with division of labour and interconnection of particular stages with the final common desirable result. In some extant this decision looks like the work of any modern scientific laboratory, but with larger universality.