Sacrifice / Offering (Yajña)
The Vedic offering that upholds the world — later turned inward as the sacrifice of breath, senses, and action.
Yajña is sacrifice — the central act of Vedic religion, in which offerings are made (classically into a consecrated fire) to sustain the order of the world and bind together the human, ancestral, and divine realms. It is the very arena of Mīmāṃsā, the school devoted to the science of ritual. Over time the idea was profoundly interiorized: the Upaniṣads and the Gītā reinterpret sacrifice as the offering of the breath, the senses, knowledge, or one's very action — so that a life rightly lived becomes itself a continual sacrifice.
How it traveled
- Chāndogya UpaniṣadKuru-Pañcāla region · -700redefines
- Bṛhadāraṇyaka UpaniṣadMithilā (kingdom of Videha) · -700explains
- Bhagavad-gītāKuru-Pañcāla region · -150explains
Key passages(19)
All of these are knowers of Yajna, having their sins consumed by Yajna, and eating of the nectar—the remnant of Yajna, they go to the Eternal Brahman. (Even) this world is not for the non-performer of
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Various Yajnas, like the above, are strewn in the store-house of the Veda. Know them all to be born of action, and thus knowing, thou shalt be free.
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Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad · Vedic Revelation (śruti)
He desired that this body should be fit for sacrifice (medhya), and that he should be embodied by it. Then he became a horse (asva), because it swelled (asvat), and was fit for sacrifice (medhya); and
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He then says, Svaha to Agni (fire), pours ghee into the fire, and throws what remains into the Mantha (mortar). He then says, Svaha to Soma, pours ghee into the fire, and throws what remains into the
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Verily, he who purifies (Vâyu) is the sacrifice, for he (the air) moving along, purifies everything. Because moving along he purifies everything, therefore he is the sacrifice. Of that sacrifice there
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What people call sacrifice (yagña), that is really abstinence (brahmakarya). For he who knows, obtains that (world of Brahman, which others obtain by sacrifice), by means of abstinence. What people
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Thou knowest, O Death, the fire-sacrificef which leads us to heaven; tell it to me, for I am full of faith. Those who live in the heaven-world reach immortality,- this I ask as my second boon."
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Because it carries equally these two oblations, the out-breathing and the in-breathing, the Samâna is he (the Hotri priest). The mind is the sacrificer, the Udâna is the reward of the sacrifice, and i
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With collected minds we are at the command of the divine Savitri, that we may obtain blessedness.
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This, O Nakiketa, is thy fire which leads to heaven, and which thou hast chosen as thy second boon. That fire all men will proclaim. Choose now, O Nakiketa, thy third boon."
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