ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF VEDIC STUDIES (EJVS) Vol. 10 (2003) Issue 4 (Oct. 21) (©) ISSN 1084-7561 ======================================================================== CONTENTS: G. Ehlers A note on pUrvazikhA. T.P. Mahadevan and Frits Staal in their recent article 'The turning-point in a living tradition' (EJVS 10-1, 2003) mention "two different waves of Vedism arriving in South India at two different periods of history: the first is represented by the pUrvazikhA Brahmans with their fronted top-knots and the second by the aparazikhA Brahmans, their top-knots toward the back of their heads, making a pony tail. The pUrvazikhA Brahmans who include the Nambudiris are seen to be well established in the Tamil country by the Sangam period, thus plausibly departing from the core areas of Vedic culture by ca. 100 BCE." According to my opinion the pUrvazikhA mode of wearing the hair seems to be alluded to in some Vedic texts. At the end of the gavAmayana or soma sacrifice lasting for one year the participants have to undergo a special kind of shaving their hair. The expression is e.g. TS 7,4,9,1 zikhAm anu pra vapante - "sie scheren [ihre Haare] entlang dem Haarschopf (gemeint wohl: bis auf den Haarschopf" (Goto 1987: 288 note 679). Caland ad PB 4,9,22 zikhA anu pravapante offers a different translation: "their top-knots they one after another cause to be shaved." Similar the parallel JB 2,374 tasmAt sattriNo dvAdaze mAsy api zikhAH pravapante, where Caland 1919 § 162 translates: "Deshalb scheeren sich die Teilnehmer an einem Sattra im zwölften Monate auch die Haarzöpfe ab." Caland's translation is not likely for the following reasons. The participants of a GavAmayana just follow the cows, who were the first to perform this session. The cows started the year-long session in order to obtain horns (KS 33,1; TS 7,5,1; PB 4,1; JB 2,374) or horns and claws (AB 4,17). In the tenth month they obtained horns. Some of them continued and in the twelfth month their horns "got curved." Thus Caland ad PB 4,1,2 zRNgANi prAvartanta with the note that: "prAvartanta is usually taken in the sense of: 'they fell off'. It is not clear to me how pravartate can have this meaning and I am inclined to take it in the sense of: 'to get curved' (at the top) ... The cows all obtained horns during the ten months, but those who continued the sacrifice, of them these horns got curved at the top; a tUpara animal, therefore, is, if I am right, not only a hornless animal, but also one with small, inward bent horns." It seems to be clear that pra-vartante does not mean "to fall off", but "to turn forward", "to protrude", "to start to grow" etc. (Caland 1919 § 162: "Deren Hörner begannen ... hervorzutreten"). Moreover, men imitate the session of the cows and want to look like them at the end of the year: gavAM ... anurUpA bhavanti (PB 4,9,22; JB 2,374). Therefore, pra-vartante and pra-vapante must refer to something similar. The horns of the cows turn forward during the last month of the year, and correspondingly the hair of the GavAmayana participants is shaved forward except for the zikhA. In accordance with TS 7,4,9,1 zikhAm anu pra vapante and PB 4,9,22 zikhA anu pravapante I am inclined to read JB 2,374 apizikhAH pravapante (cf. the compounds apikakSa, apikarNa etc.): "they shave their hair forward towards the region of their hair-knots (i.e. in order to have the zikhA in front of their head)." Abbreviations and Bibliography AB Aitareya-BrAhmaNa JB JaiminIya-BrAhmaNa KS KAThakam. Die SaMhitA der KaTha-ZAkhA PB PaNcaviMZa-BrAhmaNa TS TaittirIya-SaMhitA Caland, W. (1919) Das JaiminIya-BrAhmaNa in Auswahl Caland, W. (1931) PaNcaviMZa-BrAhmaNa. The BrAhmaNa of twenty five chapters Goto, T. (1987) Die "I. Praesensklasse" im Vedischen ===================================================================== COLOPHON Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies ========================= Editor-in-Chief: Michael Witzel, Harvard University Managing Editor: Enrica Garzilli, University of Macerata Assistant Editor: Makoto Fushimi, Harvard University Technical Assistance: Ludovico Magnocavallo, Milano Editorial Board: Madhav Deshpande University of Michigan, Ann Arbor Harry Falk Freie Universitaet Berlin Yasuke Ikari Kyoto University Boris Oguibenine University of Strasbourg Asko Parpola University of Helsinki -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- email: ejvs-list@shore.net witzel@fas.harvard.edu http://www.nautilus.shore.net/~india/ejvs European mirror: http://www.asiatica.org or http://www.asiatica.org/publications/ejvs/ (©) COPYRIGHT NOTICE ISSN 1084-7561 The Materials in this journal are copyrighted. 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