Śāntyudakavidhi in the Atharvavedic Tradition
Résumé
The term śāntyudaka, meaning propitiatory or pacifying water, often translated as "holy water" 1 , denotes the substance, as well as the rite that is succinctly prescribed by the Kauśikasūtra (KauśS) 8.23-9.11. More detailed descriptions of the rite are given by the commentator Keśava, the Atharvaṇīya Paddhati (AthPaddh), a so-called commentary on the KauśS (Saṁhitāvidhivivaraṇa), and the prayogas. The usage of the pacifying water and the rite for its preparation are specific to Atharvavedic ritualism. Its employment is at length mentioned in the KauśS: in sprinkling in the rite for a king's coronation (17.1); as a remedy for a boil due to unknown cause, which is sprinkled (31.21); for sprinkling the student at the ceremony marking the end of his studies (42.13); it is poured in a hole dug for erecting the main pillar in the rite for building a house (43.7); for sprinkling the cow in the rite for immolation (44.4); in a prāyaścitta performed to counteract the incontinence, while tying a rope of darbha on the student, after having sprinkled it (46 s.21); in a prāyaścitta effected at the first emerging of the two upper teeth, when the child and his parents are to eat rice boiled in pacifying water (46.45); in the rite for the first shaving 2 , when the priest sprinkles thrice the fire and around and makes the child 1 This rendering is the least preferred, due to its western connotation, and to its likely concurrence with kośa ("holy water"), an ordeal with water in which an idol has been bathed, administered to an accused (cf. Nāradasmṛti 20.41 ff.). 2 and implicitly in the first tonsure.
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