{"collection":"Hinduism","full_text_available":false,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/sacred_texts_v1_hin_sbr_sbe26_sbe2653_htm/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/sacred_texts_v1_hin_sbr_sbe26_sbe2653_htm","id":"sacred_texts_v1_hin_sbr_sbe26_sbe2653_htm","license":"unknown_pending_legal_review","rights_basis":"sacred_texts_v1_preview_gate_primary_text_only; acquisition-method/ToS and compilation-copyright questions still open, not resolved by this gate","source":"sacred_texts_v1","source_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/hin/sbr/sbe26/sbe2653.htm","summary":"This is a section of Julius Eggeling's 1885 English translation of the *Satapatha Brahmana*, a Sanskrit prose text belonging to the Vedic Brahmana literature \u2014 ritual-exegetical texts that explain the meaning and proper conduct of Vedic sacrifices. The specific passage concerns *dakshin\u00e2s*, the mandatory gifts priests receive after performing a Soma sacrifice, and argues that these gifts are what \"invigorate\" the sacrifice after it has been \"slain\" through the acts of pressing, slaughtering, and grinding involved in the ritual. A central theological claim is that there are two classes of gods \u2014 the divine gods and learned Brahmins as \"human gods\" \u2014 and that oblations serve the former while priestly gifts serve the latter, with both classes together conveying the sacrificer to the heavenly world. The text prescribes in granular detail the order and recipients of gifts (gold to the Agnidh, gold to an Atreya, cow to the Hotri, cloth and horse to others), and offers mythological rationales for each: gold is life, the cow is breath, cloth is skin, and the horse is a thunderbolt. A notably distinctive element is the text's cosmological accounting system, in which each category of gift corresponds to a cosmic substance and a Vedic deity who originally bestowed it, collapsing ritual economics into a map of the universe's fundamental constituents. Scholars of Vedic religion, comparative ritual studies, or the social history of priestly compensation would find this passage most directly relevant.","tags":[],"text":null,"title":"Satapatha Brahmana Part II (SBE26): Fourth K\u00e2<I&...","tradition":"Hinduism","translated_text":null,"word_count":2862}