2015/03/19 by David M. Knipe · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Anthropological Studies and Insights #Vietnamese History and Culture Studies #Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies
paper · doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199397686.001.0001
openalex publication_date 2015/03/19 · openalex created_date 2022/05/12 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
Abstract Four generations of ten families in the Godavari Delta of coastal Andhra speak about their lives; ancestral lineages; decisions as Yajur Veda pandits, wives, and children; and ways of coping with an avalanche of changes in modern India. They are virtually unrecognized survivors of a 3,700-year-old oral tradition, the last in India who simultaneously recite and teach their Taittiriya texts and perform according to Vedic tradition the ancient animal and soma sacrifices, sometimes with sixteen priests for forty consecutive days. This study covers Vedic families, including nine prestigious ahitagni (three-fire sacrificers), from 1980 to the present. They live in isolated hamlets or small villages and towns in the delta of the Godavari River on the Bay of Bengal, famed for bountiful rice and coconut plantations, but a region that has received scant attention from historians of religion and anthropologists. This book allows them to speak about their extraordinary heritage. Pandits describe their many years of learning one or more of the four Vedas, choices for livelihood, relationships with Agni from studenthood (brahmacarya) to the first soma sacrifice and further extended rituals, and thoughts about becoming an ancestor and experiencing heaven. Equally important, their wives detail experiences as co-sacrificers in twice-daily milk offerings (agni-hotra); lunar, harvest, and other rites; and their rearing of children, hopefully to become future pandits and sacrificers.