PuNDarIka sacrifice

[Vincent Eltschinger]

Dear François,
In his Studies in the Religious Life of Ancient and Medieval India (Delhi
1971), D.C. Sircar mentions at least once a Pau.n.dariika sacrifice (pp.
177-178). Sircar refers to Pulake'sin I, the Caalukya king of Baadaami,
who is "credited with the performance of the Agni.s.toma, Agnicayana,
Vaajapeya, Bahusuvar.na, Pau.n.dariika and A'svamedha sacrifices and the
Hira.nyagarbha-mahaadaana." Among his sources, Sircar refers to Epigraphia
Indica XXVII, p. 8.
Best,
Vincent Eltschinger



> Dear Members of the Indology List,
>
> I recently stumbled on a sacrifice called "puNDarIka-" in a Gupta
> inscription edited by Fleet (Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum vol. III, No.
> 59, pp. 252–254, "Bijayagadh Stone Pillar Inscription of
> Vishnuvardhana").
> In this inscription it is said that having performed the "puNDarIka", king
> ViSNuvardhana erected a yUpa: "kRtau puNDarIke yUpo yam pratiSThApitas
> [...] zrI ViSNuvarddhanena" (Fleet op. cit. p. 253, l. 3). This post seems
> to be the stone pillar where this inscription is found and which is shaped
> like a vedic yUpa, set up on a platform near the south wall of a fort now
> located at Bayana in the Bharatpur District of Rajasthan.
>
> I cannot see exactly what kind of sacrifice this "puNDarIka" is. It is
> nowhere to be found in the lexicons devoted to Vedic ritual (Renou 1954,
> Sen 1978, Mylius 1995), or in fundamental textbooks on ritual like that of
> Hillebrandt (1897, repr. 1981), or in the section of Kane's Hist. of Dh.
> devoted to sacrifices and rituals (Vol. II pp. 976–1255).
>
> The dictionaries (MW, PW) give, among the possible meanings of puNDarIka,
> "a kind of sacrifice/ein best. Opfer" with references to the MahAbhArata,
> among which the most significant I could find seems to be:
>
> MBh 3.13.16 azvamedho rAjasUyaH puNDarIko 'tha gosavaH / etair api
> mahAyajJair iSTaM te bhUridakSiNaiH.
>
> There it is said to be a "great sacrifice". In this context this
> qualification seems to imply that it is a zrauta ritual, as it is
> mentioned together with other well known zrauta sacrifices described by
> the ZrautasUtras, most of them regalians, but the ZrautasUtras do not, to
> my knowledge, describe any kind of puNDarIka rite.
>
> A puNDarIka sacrifice is otherwise mentioned a number of times as bringing
> some unspecified but usually great reward in the "tIrtha" section of the
> MBh (3.81–82; e.g. ), where we also learn that there was a "puNDarIka"
> place of pilgrimage, and that going there rewards the pilgrim with the
> fruits of a... puNDarIka sacrice (MBh 3.18.69 zuklapakSe dazamyAM tu
> puNDarIkaM samAvizet, tatra snAtvA naro rAjan puNDarIkaphalaM labhet).
> In this section of the MBh the puNDarIka sacrifice sometimes appears close
> to, or is contrasted with, the azvamedha, e.g. in MBh 3.82.24ff., or the
> vAjapeya in a surprising passage where a yUpa appears, but we do not know
> if it was erected for/as a result of a sacrifice and which kind it could
> have been:
>
> MBh 3.82.74–75 tato brahmasaro gacched dharmAraNyopazobhitam /
> pauNDarIkam avApnoti prabhAtAm eva zarvarIm [74] tasmin sarasi rAjendra
> brahmaNo yUpa ucchritaH / yUpaM pradakSiNaṃM kRtvA vAjapeyaphalaM labhet
>
> Another passage of the MBh where puNDarIka and vAjapeya appear side by
> side is 2.5.89 kratUn ekacitto vAjapeyAMz ca sarvazaH / puNDarIkAMz ca
> kArtsnyena yatase kartum AtmavAn.
>
> Both MBh 2.5.89 and 3.28.74–75 seem to rule out the possibility that
> "puNDarIka" may sometimes have been a synonym of "vAjapeya" in the MBh, as
> I first thought could have been the case.
> The data I have collected so far nevertheless suggest that this
> "puNDarIka" sacrifce was a zrauta ceremony of some kind, that involved the
> erection of a yUpa, and thus an animal sacrifice following the Vedic
> norms.
>
> Could anyone on the list tell me more about this sacrifice? All help would
> be greatly appreciated.
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> Dr François Voegeli
>
> Senior FNS Researcher
> Institut d'Archéologie et des Sciences de l'Antiquité
> Anthropole, bureau 4018
> Faculté des Lettres
> Université de Lausanne
> CH-1015 Lausanne