Consider the following statements about the practice of Vedic sacrifices : 1. The shrauta (Vedic sacrifices) involved the use of three fires — the garhapatya (householder’s fire), ahavaniya (offeratorial fire) and dakshinagni (southern fire). 2. These fires were supposed to be placed in pits of different shapes, i.e., the garhapatya to be square, ahavaniya to be round and that of the dakshinagni, rectangle-shaped. Which of the statements given above is/are correct ?

Correct — A, 1 only. Statement 1 reproduces the shrauta system exactly. A householder who had formally set up the sacred fires kept three of them — the garhapatya, the perpetual household fire from which the others were kindled; the ahavaniya, into which the oblations were actually poured; and the dakshinagni, the southern fire used for rites directed at the ancestors. Statement 2 permutes the geometry. In the ritual manuals the garhapatya hearth is round, the ahavaniya is square and the dakshinagni is semi-circular; the stem swaps the first two and turns the third into a rectangle, so all three of its shapes are wrong. Since statement 1 holds and statement 2 fails, only the first is correct.

• (b)2 only — Statement 2 is the false one. It reverses the shapes of the garhapatya and the ahavaniya and gives the dakshinagni a rectangle it never had.
• (c)Both 1 and 2 — Both cannot stand, because the shapes in statement 2 do not match any of the three fires described in the Shrautasutra and Shulbasutra literature.
• (d)Neither 1 nor 2 — Statement 1 is a plain and accurate description of the three shrauta fires and their names, so rejecting both statements is wrong.

Later Vedic ritual splits into two families. Grihya rites are domestic, performed by the householder himself at a single fire, and cover birth, marriage and death. Shrauta rites are the great public sacrifices, performed by trained priests and requiring three separate fires — garhapatya, ahavaniya and dakshinagni. A man became an ahitagni, one who has established the fires, through the agnyadheya ceremony, after which the garhapatya was in principle never allowed to go out.

The item is decided by one memorised pairing rather than by a general sense of Vedic religion. The ahavaniya is the square fire and sits at the eastern end of the ritual ground; the garhapatya is round and sits at the western end; the dakshinagni is semi-circular and sits to the south. The three altars were required to be of equal area despite their different shapes, and it is precisely that requirement — turning a circle into a square of the same area and back — that produced the geometry of the Shulbasutras, the oldest surviving Indian mathematical texts. So a student who remembers why the shapes mattered will not be caught by a statement that shuffles them.

• The three shrauta fires are the garhapatya (householder's fire), the ahavaniya (offering fire) and the dakshinagni (southern fire).
• Their prescribed shapes are round for the garhapatya, square for the ahavaniya and semi-circular for the dakshinagni.
• The ahavaniya stands to the east, the garhapatya to the west and the dakshinagni to the south of the sacrificial ground.
• The three altars had to enclose equal areas, which is the practical problem the Shulbasutras were written to solve.
• Grihya rites needed one fire and no priest; shrauta rites needed all three fires and a body of ritual specialists.

• Assuming the householder's own fire must be the square one because square hearths look domestic; it is the round one.
• Treating a two-statement item as all-or-nothing when only one statement has been tampered with.
• Confusing shrauta and grihya rites, which differ in the number of fires and in whether priests are needed at all.

As a two-statement item where the first sentence is straight textbook and the second silently permutes a set of attributes the candidate is assumed to have memorised.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the three shrauta fires is circular in shape and maintained perpetually by the householder?

  • (a)Garhapatya
  • (b)Ahavaniya
  • (c)Dakshinagni
  • (d)Sabhya

  Answer(a) Garhapatya — the round western hearth from which the other two fires are kindled.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Shulbasutras are best described as texts dealing with

  • (a)the construction and geometry of sacrificial altars
  • (b)royal law and punishment
  • (c)medicine and surgery
  • (d)Sanskrit grammar

  Answer(a) the construction and geometry of sacrificial altars — India's oldest surviving mathematical writing grew out of altar building.