Vedic Domestic Fire-Ritual: Sthalipaka

The discovery of fire is a very important event in the humancivilisation. In ancient times, however, it was difficult to create fire. This gave rise to the idea of maintaing the fire all the time and also to fire-worship. Thus, the fire worship is very common in most of the religion in the world. In Ancient India also, the ancestral fire or the marriage-fire was always kept alive in the house. For that purpose it was ritually given the morning and evening offerings. This was the part of the grhya, ‘domestic’ ritual and the fire also was called Grhya. Then modelled on the elaborate Darsapurnamasesti, ‘the fort-nightly offerings’ in the Srauta fire, the rite of Sthalipaka, ‘the fort-nightly offerings’ in the grhya ‘domestic’ fire was designed and observed. This book is an attempt to document the ritual performance of Sthalipaka with the photographs of the actual performance which took place in Pune. It has one hundred and ten photographs showing the important gradual ritual steps in together with the detailed explanation of the rites being performed. It also provides the edited original Sanskrit text, its Roman transcription and also the English translation.