Hinduism

Satapatha Brahmana Part 1 (SBE12): Second Kânda: II, 4, 2. Second Brâhmana

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This is a passage from the *Satapatha Brahmana*, an ancient Vedic prose text (roughly 800–300 BCE) belonging to the Shuklayajurveda tradition, here in Julius Eggeling's 1882 English translation. The passage presents a cosmogonic myth in which Prajapati assigns different modes of eating and sustenance to gods, ancestors (fathers), humans, animals, and Asuras, establishing the cosmic and ritual order that governs each class of being. The bulk of the text is a detailed, step-by-step prescription for the *pitru yajna* (ancestral offering ritual), specifying exactly how a householder should prepare rice cakes, orient his body, handle sacrificial grass, pour libations, and address the spirits of his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather. A notably distinctive claim is the text's assertion that human obesity is a sign of moral transgression — humans alone violate Prajapati's ordained eating schedule (morning and evening only), and those who grow fat do so through unrighteousness. The ritual prescriptions are grounded in cosmological correspondences: the afternoon belongs to the ancestors, the root of the grass stalk belongs to the fathers, and the single stroke used to cut the grass mirrors the finality of death. This text would interest scholars of Vedic religion, ritual theory, or the history of Indian religious thought, but its primary mode is technical liturgical instruction rather than theological argument.

Satapatha Brahmana Part 1 (SBE12): Second Kânda: II, 4, 2. Second Brâhmana

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