16 November 1994
India Institute Amsterdam, the Netherlands

LECTURE ON THE PRAVARGYA: A VEDIC RITUAL IN CHANGING CONTEXTS

The Pravargya ritual is one of the very few rituals which are
explicitly mentioned in the Rgveda (the oldest of the four
Vedas). The main object in this ritual is a clay pot which is
filled with purified butter and then heated red hot to the
accompaniment of sacred songs and recitations. If freshly milked
cow's and goat's milk are added, impressive lashes of lames and
fire are produced. Among the symbols with which the songs and
hymns associate the heated pot are light and the sun. Ancient
commentaries on the ritual suggest that its purpose is that the
participants may acquire a portion of the lustre of the Sun.

By Jan E.M. Houben

In the ancient descriptions, the Pravargya is a performance which
takes place during the preparatory days of another ritual: the
Soma sacrifice. In the Soma sacrifice, the preparation and
consumption of the hallucinatory juice of the soma plant plays a
central role. Although the ritual descriptions present the
Pravargya as a subsidiary part of the Soma sacrifice, the
structure of the ritual and some other indications suggest that
the two have slightly different backgrounds, It seems that the
pravargya originally was an independent ritual, which was later
adapted and absorbed into the Soma cult.
A recent performance of the Pravargya took place in the context
of a nine-day Soma ritual (Somayþga)in Delhi in March 1994. It
was organized by Slukar Nahrah, who had his first Somayþga
performed in Nanded, a town in Mahþrþstra, India, in 1980. In the
1994 performance, the ancient rules, established in the
traditionally transmitted texts, were followed as strictly as
possible by the traditional priests. The immediate context of the
Pravargya, the Somayþga, made the former a subsidiary of the
latter ritual. The same hall where these ancient rituals were
performed was also used for the performance of rituals of the
reformist Arya Samaj movement, which for instance allows women to
study the sacred texts and to perform rituals. At the same time,
the wider context (a Vedic ritual performed in Delhi, the capital
of India) attributed a new symbolism  to the entire complex of
performances as well as new "layers of meaning" obvious to anyone
familiar with recent South Asian history.