When the sattrins “offer themselves”: The plural agency in Vedic sacrifice

Tiziana Pontillo

2023-01-01

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Abstract

One of the distinctive features of the sattra is commonly considered the fact that each participant in the sattra event can play the role of officiant (see e.g. Mylius 1995, s.v.). Thus, there is no “priestly gift”, but Falk (1985; 1986) objects that the sacrificers present themselves, i.e. their ātman, as dakṣiṇā, as explained in TS 7,4.9 and KB 15,1.23–26. On the other hand, the sattra way of performing sacrifices might have been a secondary later step in the history of sacrifice (Bronkhorst 2016: 159). Indeed, ancient Vedic sources include explicit recommendations for performing especially the dvādaśāha for oneself, instead of for someone else. Furthermore, the “plural agency of the sattra” even became the object of Jaimini’s Mīmāṃsāsūtras 10,6.45–59 (sattrasya bahukartṛkatvādhikaraṇam). The present paper aims at reconsidering the phrase ātmádakṣiṇam sattrám on the basis of Candotti, Neri & Pontillo 2020 and 2021, where the most ancient occurrences of the term dákṣiṇā are re-interpreted as the sacrificer’s “magnificence” both in an abstract sense “as an auspicious condition prototypically proper to a successful leader”, and in a more material one “as the outcome of such a condition”, which becomes the ritual substance that allows a community to perform a sacrifice.