THE ANKURARARPANA MANTRAMS AS PER TAITTIREEYA YAJURVEDA TRADITIONS.

 

THE ANKURARARPANA MANTRAMS AS PER TAITTIREEYA YAJURVEDA TRADITIONS..

THE MANTRAMS AND PROCEDURES MIGHT VARY SLIGTLY FOR OTHER SAKHAS.. AND FOR OTHER TANTRIC AND AGAMIC RITES.

The five urns made of mud are placed on a clean elevated ground.. in the appropriate place in the place of worship.. The middle pot is to house Brahma, the Eastern one to house Indra, the Southern one Yama, the western one Varuna and the Northern one the Soma or moon.

मध्ये

ॐ भूः ब्रह्माणं आवाहयामि। ॐ भुवाः प्रजापतिं आवाहयामि। ॐ सुवः हिरण्यगर्भं आवाहयामि। ॐ भूर्भुवस्सुवः चतुर्मुख आवाहयामि। ब्रह्मणे इदं आसनं॥

madhye

om bhūḥ brahmāṇaṁ āvāhayāmi| om bhuvāḥ prajāpatiṁ āvāhayāmi| om suvaḥ hiraṇyagarbhaṁ āvāhayāmi| om bhūrbhuvassuvaḥ caturmughaṁ āvāhayāmi| brahmaṇe idaṁ āsanaṁ||

In the middle pot.. Brahma is invoked..

He is invoked using the Bhoo vyahriti and the name Brahma ,

the Bhuva Vyahriti and the name Prajapati,

the Suva Vyahrita and the name Hiranya garbha

and with all the three Vyahrits.. and the name chaturmukha..

He is offered respected seat in the pot.

प्राच्याम्

ॐ भूः इन्द्रं आवाहयामि। ॐ भुवः वज्रिणं आवाह्यामि। ॐ सुवः शतक्रतुं आवाहयामि। ॐ भूर्भुवस्सुवः शचीपतिं आवाहयामि। इन्द्राय इदं आसनं॥

prācyām

om bhūḥ indraṁ āvāhayāmi| om bhuvaḥ vajriṇaṁ āvāhyāmi| om suvaḥ śatakratuṁ āvāhayāmi| om bhūrbhuvassuvaḥ śacīpatiṁ āvāhayāmi| indrāya idaṁ āsanaṁ||

In the pot placed towards east of middle .. Indra is invoked..

He is invoked using the Bhoo vyahriti and the name Indra ,

the Bhuva Vyahriti and the name Vajrin, the one who wields the weapon or Vajra or thunderbolt

the Suva Vyahrita and the name Shataratu.. the one who has performed hundred (Ashvamedha ) Sacrifices

and with all the three Vyahrits.. and the name Shachipathi, the husband of Shachi the Indrani.. He is offered respected seat in the pot.

दक्षिणे

ॐ भूः यमं आवाहयामि। ॐ भुवः वैवस्वतं आवाह्यामि। ॐ सुवः पितृपतिं आवाहयामि। ॐ भूर्भुवस्सुवः धर्मराजं आवाहयामि। यमाय इदं आसनं॥

dakṣiṇe

om bhūḥ yamaṁ āvāhayāmi| om bhuvaḥ vaivasvataṁ āvāhyāmi| om suvaḥ pitṛpatiṁ āvāhayāmi| om bhūrbhuvassuvaḥ dharmarājaṁ āvāhayāmi| yamāya idaṁ āsanaṁ||

In the pot placed towards South of middle .. Yama is invoked..

He is invoked using the Bhoo vyahriti and the name Yama,

the Bhuva Vyahriti and the name Vaivasvatha.. the son of the Sun god

the Suva Vyahriti and the name Pitrupathi the Lord of the world of manes

and with all the three Vyahrits.. and the name Dharmaraja .

He is offered respected seat in the pot.

प्रदीच्याम्॥

ॐ भूः वरुणं आवाहयामि। ॐ भुवः प्राचेतसं आवाह्यामि। ॐ सुवः सुरूपिणं आवाहयामि। ॐ भूर्भुवस्सुवः अपांपतिं आवाहयामि। वरुणाय इदं आसनं॥

prdīcyām||

om bhūḥ varuṇaṁ āvāhayāmi| om bhuvaḥ prācetasaṁ āvāhyāmi| om suvaḥ surūpiṇaṁ āvāhayāmi| om bhūrbhuvassuvaḥ apāṁpatiṁ āvāhayāmi| varuṇāya idaṁ āsanaṁ||

In the pot placed towards West of middle .. Varuna is invoked..

He is invoked using the Bhoo vyahriti and the name Varuna , ,

the Bhuva Vyahriti and the name Praachetas

the Suva Vyahriti and the name Suroopi the one with attractive form

and with all the three Vyahrits.. and the name Apaam Pathi or the lord of waters.

.He is offered respected seat in the pot.

उदीच्याम्॥

ॐ भूः सोमं आवाहयामि। ॐ भुवः इन्दुं आवाह्यामि। ॐ सुवः निशाकरं आवाहयामि। ॐ भूर्भुवस्सुवः ओषधीशं आवाहयामि। सोमाय इदं आसनं॥

udīcyām||

om bhūḥ somaṁ āvāhayāmi| om bhuvaḥ induṁ āvāhyāmi| om suvaḥ niśākaraṁ āvāhayāmi| om bhūrbhuvassuvaḥ oṣadhīśaṁ āvāhayāmi| somāya idaṁ āsanaṁ||

In the pot placed towards West of middle ..Soma is invoked..

He is invoked using the Bhoo vyahriti and the name Soma

the Bhuva Vyahriti and the name Indu

the Suva Vyahriti and the name Nishaakara

and with all the three Vyahrits.. and the name Aushadeesha or the lord of herbs

.He is offered respected seat in the pot.

ब्रह्मादिभ्यो नमः अर्घ्यं पाद्यं आचमनं स्नानं समस्तोपचारान् समर्पयामि

brahmādibhyo namaḥ arghyaṁ pādyaṁ ācamanaṁ snānaṁ samastopacārān samarpayāmi

The five deities Brahma, Indra, Yama, Varuna and Soma are offered arghyam, Padyam, Achamanam Snanam and all other honours..

दिशां पतीं नमस्यामि सर्वकाम फलप्रदान् कुर्वन्तु सफलं कर्म सततं शुभं॥

diśāṁ patīṁ namasyāmi sarvakāma phalapradān kurvantu saphalaṁ karma satataṁ śubhaṁ||

Prayer

I am offering pranams to the lords of the directions, they are capable of granting me all my desires. May they be pleased to enable me to complete the solemn celebration successfully ever.. with a happy finish.

Then the mantras from Aushadee Sooktham are chanted..
Of course many more vedic mantras can be chanted here..

But the essential three stanzas from Taittireeya Brahmanam are quoted below

या जाता ओषधयो देवेभ्यः त्रियुगम् पुरा

मन्धामि बभ्रुणा महाग्ं शतान् धामानि सप्त च॥

याः फलिनीर् या अफला अपुष्पा यास्च पुष्पाणीः।

बृहस्पति प्रसूता स्ता नो मुञ्चत्वग्म् हसः॥

ओषदयः सम् वदन्ते सोमेन सह राज्ञा।

यस्मै करोति ब्राह्माणस्तग्म् राजन् पारयामसि॥

yā jātā oṣadhayo devebhyaḥ triyugam purā

mandhāmi babhruṇā mahāgṁ śatān dhāmaani sapta ca||

yāḥ phalinīr yā aphalā apuṣpā yāsca puṣpāṇīh|

bhṛhaspati prasūtā stā no muñcatvagm hasaḥ||

oṣadayaḥ sam vadante somena saha rājñā|

yasmai karoti brāhmāṇastagm rājan pārayāmasi||

I am celebrating and praising the seven herbs of seeds with brownish red colour.. the herbs which were born three yugas earlier even to Devas and are occupying one hundred and seven fortresses and palaces in their great existence

May those herbal plants which have taken birth from the Divine Preceptor and Deity Brihaspati, who would yield fruits, who have not given fruits, who have yielded flowers and who have not yielded flowers too ..may all of them release us from all our sins and misfortunes.

The herbs are in the company of King Soma the moon, and all are declaring in unison..

May the person for whom the learned scholars are spreading us through this Karma, attain eternal liberation from worldly woes ..

Then the Yajamana first, his patni then and other sumagalis spread the seeds on the five urns

The mantram while placing seeds in the respective urns is

ॐ ब्रह्मणे नमः अयं बीजावापः॥

ॐ इन्द्राय नमः अयं बीजावापः॥

ॐ यमाय नमः अयं बीजावापः॥

ॐ वरुणाय नमः अयं बीजावापः॥

ॐ सोमाय नमः अयं बीजावापः॥

om brahmaṇe namaḥ ayaṁ bījāvāpaḥ||

om indrāya namaḥ ayaṁ bījāvāpaḥ||

om yamāya namaḥ ayaṁ bījāvāpaḥ||

om varuṇāya namaḥ ayaṁ bījāvāpaḥ||

om somāya namaḥ ayaṁ bījāvāpaḥ||

Pranams to Brahma.. I am spreading the seeds for you

Pranams to Indra.. I am spreading the seeds for you

Pranams to Yama.. I am spreading the seeds for you

Pranams to Varuna .. I am spreading the seeds for you

Pranams to Soma .. I am spreading the seeds for you

The urns with seeds are watered or nurtured with milk and kept for five or seven days or more according to the length of the function and finally the sprouted seeds are immersed in some waterfront ceremoniously..

Ankuraarpanam or Paalika thalikkal

Ankuraarpanam or Paalika thalikkal in Tamil. is a prelude to almost any shubhakaryam or auspicious function.

The tribute is to all the devatas including the digdevatas.

Seeds of all major dhanyams available at the Vedic eon - what we call nava danyas - are soaked in cow's milk and put in earthen receptacles filled with mrittika or special mud and soil mixture placed at cardinal points .

The sprouting is the sign of growth and life.

There are Vedic rituals for collection of the mrittika too.( mrit samgrahanam)

For all samskaras like marriage seemantham upanayanam jathakarmam etc the ankuraarpanam can be done.

But now we restrict it to major functions. For yajnas and yagas ankuraarpanam is there.

For ulsavam and kumbhabhishekam or any great function in a temple ankuraarpanam is a must.(the vedic and agamic procedures vary.)

In fact the Vedic ankuraarpanam is done by the kartha or yajamana after chanting The mantras in company with ritwiks.

The wife of the kartha and other ladies assist that is all.

A lady with a living husband and a putra is the best candidate.

In fact every such lady is respected as Uma and Laksmi.

The palikas sprout and after four or seven days or more as the case may be, are left in some place with lots and lots of water .

This is the Vedic tribute to nature.

The seeds mixed with water milk and mud will never fail to grow.

Our wish is that the family too should grow like that spontaneously.

The loukeeka elements like selection of ladies for adding ankuras etc are just social issues.

The yajamana patni should participate. That is a must

I can give the mantas and translation too later if there is any interest

For Hindus life is a mixture of happiness and challenges too..

 

Hinduism never prescribed that one should not relish the nice moments in his life..

Even the procedures for showing pleasures and jubilation and procedures for mourning are clearly prescribed.. We can see that even during a Yajnam, there were songs and jubilation prescribed. But I was addressing to a situation where it was claimed that the days and nights are created by God just for pleasure. Maybe, the universal declaration of rights of the man, would chime in to endorse this idea..

But Hinduism-- it a a huge bundle of prescriptions denoting varied paths and styles of life.. will not veer away from the hard truth that one has to pay the price for what he does.. either good or bad.

It would be funny to claim that married lives were messed up by Hindus because of faith.

For this was a community which prescribed and canvassed for lots and lots of children, and no one ever said that one should not enjoy sex while siring children.

Each social and religious rule can be analysed in this manner, from a wide and multi spectral perspective...

Narrowness in perception is not the faulty creation of the authors of scriptures or social leaders of the Vedic eon..

If some people tried to interpret things to further their selfish interest, the ignorance of the set-up and the gullibility of the person at the receiving end are to be blamed.

Such exploitation will happen anywhere. Not because of any religion, but because of the ugly and base nature of some of the players on the arena.

For a Hindu, the concept that life is just a honeymoon period of eternal happiness (created by God) is not right.

The basic foundation of Hindu religion is the theory of Karma. We are sent to this world to expiate our bad karmas and get purified, If we do not add bad karma to our life during the present life too.. If we have atoned sufficiently for our past bad or evil Karmas, we may escape from the life cycle...

And if we try to make this life seem like a huge picnic with much flutter and fury, we have two disadvantages.

First, we lose our chance at least to a certain extent to atone for our sins.

Second, usually, since human mind is made like that, the pleasures we indulging would seem pleasures only if we see some other person placed at a comparative disadvantage. Also finding even indirect pleasure in such comparison can only add to our accumulated capital of sins.

One thing about prayer is that it is essentially related to religious faith, and if a Hindu mixes Christian or other concepts to Hindu way of faith, the whole thing becomes so fuzzy and confused.. Each religion has its own way.

But I am sure about one fact. No religion with sufficiently large following has ever described this living world and a continuum of paradise. The drama which is life also has its own heroes and villains. And that drama is not conducted according to any standard script. It cannot be too.

we cannot gauge Divine logic..

The theory of Karma forming a vital part of Hinduism is not easily comprehensible anyway..

One explanation, perhaps the most plausible one, is that what the human mind conceives life as occurring in separate compartments.. Like this life, earlier life, and the life that would come-- are all viewed by the Controller as a continuum. And since He sees the entire string of births, from beginning to end and would outlive all such episodes, there is nothing illogical in His action of meting out punishment in one life for the misdeeds of another life. And the question of immediate punishment-- our life is very short- at the most hundred years-therefore an hour or a day look substantial to us.. But in Gods clock, a day, a year a millennium, and even bigger time-slices would appear to be too tiny .in comparison to the infinite time that He governs.. So it is too difficult to test God's logic with the evaluation and tools of validation provided to our mind whose endowments are far too limited. 

यतो वाचो निवर्तन्ते अप्राप्य मनसा सह Taittireeya Samhita.. Krishna Yajurveda

If one is curious about or even if he is baffled about Gods logic, it is okay..

But usually if one challenges Gods logic, it will not be okay for him because he is breaking his head against a huge mountain. Anyway everything is Okay by God.

We believe by sheer trust or faith many things which are apparently illogical. Even small things in our day to day life conform to that category.

So in respect of such great issues, we cannot do anything, just for want of adequate data and panoramic vision too (to cover the huge time-span)

what is the sum and substance of existence on earth.

 

Every thinking person is confronted by the inherent infirmities is his thought process, and style of living, and his own evaluation of what is the sum and substance of his existence on earth.

Some say the life is delusion.

Some say we forget to realise that "Today is the day"

But the dialogue between the inconsistent or vagrant mind and comparatively rational sense of discretion are always at loggerheads.

I think Shelley said it “We look before and after and pine for what is not.”

But then just as we learn in chemistry where we have elements with unfilled energy levels except perhaps in Inert elements like Helium etc., we humans also appear to have been provided with some sort of bonds, single, double triple etc, akin to valency, and we try to bond with past, present, with friends, relatives, with emotions of pleasure, pain and so on..

Some jeevanmukthas perhaps reach the stage of zero valency.

In fact, just like chemical energies, our thoughts and emotions control us, and true, with great effort we may control them, but like a magnetic needle which has a tendency to negotiate North South direction, and even though by applying external force we can change the direction and keep the needle in a different way as long as that corrective force is in operation, the needle resumes the NS path once external for ceases to be in vogue.. (Strangely this is substance of the Newton’s first law of motion.. or inertia too)

In that situation, most of our energies would have to be spent on keeping our mind and body in a guided track.. And we may have to pay a heavy price.. We will be left with no time or energy to live and enjoy life innocently.

I just wanted to say, many hard truths in life are really hard, but they are just like that, and we can hardly do anything to alter them

I am prompted to theorize that even the concept of a Superior entity called God, who can make a difference on a permanent basis was born out of this sense of helplessness on the part of we humans.

I pray for my own benefit, Krishna, not for yours...

 

I chant the name of Krishna (God).

I pray, I confess, I seek directions, I pray for expiation...

I try to manage to connect with Krishna for something I need desperately or in exceptional cases for the sake of someone who is close to me and is in dire straits

But do I ever think of Krishna and just spend some nice thoughts on Him, without any demand or entreaty attached..?

I really doubt. I have never reached such stage in my life.

Usually I call Him for some assistance.

To ensure His assistance, I would use all techniques including prayer

and

if possible even try emotional sabotage.

And I know He is very kind and Merciful and He will answer.

But can I ever bring my mind to pray, and simply say,

"My Darling Krishna, this one prayer is just for you...?”

If I can reach anywhere near that mindset, I trust my life would attain meaning and fulfilment too.

But will it ever happen..?.

My mind gives "no" as an answer

Still Krishna, I love you.

Even if it is the love of a selfish fellow.

Even if it is the love of a sycophant.

I love you Krishna