The Evening Sandhya  -  Abbe JA Dubois

Brahmins begin this sandhya about sunset, but it must not be performed on the day of the sankranti, that is to say, on the day that the sun moves from one sign of the Zodiac to another, nor on the days of the new and full moon, nor on the twelfth day of the moon, nor yet on the day on which one has offered the sacrifice for the dead called sraddha. To perform the evening sandhya under these circumstances would be committing a crime equal to the murder of a Brahmin. If a Brahmin has just lost his father, his mother, or one of his children; if his gums bleed, or if through a wound or accident any part of his body above the navel has been bleeding, or in a word if he finds that he is impure, he would commit an unpardonable sin by performing the evening sandhya. Indeed, in the last case he would lose all his possessions and his children. Except under these special circumstances, he must never neglect this religious duty, and he must carefully observe the following rules:

He makes the usual ablutions. Then, turning to the north, he recalls the memory of Vishnu. He then thinks of Brahma and addresses the following prayer to him:

‘Brahma, you have four faces, you are my creator! Forgive me all the sins that I have committed. I am now beginning the evening sandhya. Deign to be present, and repose on my chest, and deliver me from my sins.’

He then recites the mantram which begins with these words:– ‘Glory to the lesser worlds!’ and so on as before. Closing up both nostrils, he thinks of Vishnu, and imagines that he is resting on his navel and says: ‘ Oh, Vishnu! You are of great stature and black in color. You have four arms, you are the preserver of all that exists; destroy my sins.’ He offers worship to the seven greater worlds, as in the morning sandhya, and again addressing Vishnu, he says: ‘You have created light, amrita, and all that is used for the food of mankind. Preserve me, and preserve all that lives in the world!’ Closing the right nostril with his finger, he breathes strongly through the left, and by this means burns all the sins that are in his body. Then he ejects them by breathing forcibly through the right nostril. He then directs his thoughts to Siva, the destroyer of sin and of all things, and imagines that he is resting on his forehead. He says to him: ‘O Siva! You are white and tall. You have the mark of a half-moon on your forehead; you have three eyes; you destroy all things; you are the god of gods; I implore your protection, and offer you worship!’ He once more offers puja to the different worlds, and destroys his sins by virtue of the following prayer:- ‘Oh, may my sins be destroyed by the almighty power of the sun and the fire!’ He adds: ‘O fire! you are prayer and the god of prayer. Forgive me all the mistakes I have made in the different mantrams that I have recited; and forgive me, besides, all the sins that I have this day committed in thought, word, and deed. May this water, which I drink from my uplifted hand, destroy everything bad and sinful that may be in me.’ He performs the achamania as at the morning sandhya. He also inhales some purified water into his nostrils, as he did before, and recites the mantram which begins with the words: ‘O water! At the time of the Flood,’ & c., and so on, as before mentioned.

Then he ejects by a forcible expiration the water in his nostrils, which carries away the sinful man, whom he crushes at once upon a stone. He represents this man of sin to himself as a powerful being, of extraordinary strength, with a red belly, white hair and beard, and a hideous and distorted face¹.

He evokes the gayatri, and turning to the west, he says:–

‘O god of the day, on whom depends the happiness of mankind, I offer the evening sandhya : Deign to honor me with your presence! O goddess gayatri, who are the emblem of the Vedas and the word of Brahma, whose name is composed of three letters! I offer you puja; hasten hither that I may be happy!’

Whilst making this prayer his hands are spread open and raised towards heaven. He then rubs his hands together and puts them to his breast, believing in imagination that the gayatri is reposing there. He cracks his finger-joints ten times, and turns round at the same moment; and by that he closes all places of egress, so that the goddess cannot depart. He pictures her to himself as an old woman, having Siva’s face, riding on an ox, dwelling in the disk of the sun, and united to all the Vedas. Then he says:–

‘Divine wife of Siva! You are the mother of all that is. I offer you puja at the approach of night, take me under your protection and save me! Come, gayatri, come and favorably hear my prayers!’

Whoever recites these words will obtain all that he asks for. Then, facing the north, with his arms hanging down, he recites the gayatri mantram, in the same manner and the same number of times as before. It is impossible to repeat this prayer too often in the evening, evening prayers being so much more efficacious than others. A Brahmin who daily recites this prayer uninterruptedly from sunset to midnight will by this pious exercise most assuredly place himself beyond the possibility of want or misery, and will ensure for himself a quiet and peaceful death, without sickness or pain, when his long and prosperous career shall draw to a close.

To dismiss the goddess gayatri he uses the same formulas as those of the noonday sandhya, and, after the tarpana, or libation of water, to the sun and the planet Venus, he addresses Siva in these words:- ‘O Rudra! Protect me from all accident and danger as well by night as by day. You are the lord of the world; take me under your protection that nothing may hurt me or do me harm.’ The prayer to fire follows; then he offers tarpana to the following gods, saying: ‘Glory to Brahma! Glory to water! Glory to Varuna! Glory to Vishnu! Glory to Rudra!’ While offering arghya to the sun, he says: ‘God of light, god of the day! I offer you worship! Receive the arghya that I now present to you, and deliver me from the cares and dangers of the world!’

Conclusion

‘I will conclude,’ the author goes on to say, ‘ by explaining what the sandhya is, and on what occasions it should be offered.

‘Brahma, the author and father of the Vedas, wishing to extract the essence of them, composed the sandhya, which is in respect to the other Vedas what butter is to milk, or what gold is compared with the other metals. In short, as honey is the quintessence of flowers, so the sandhya is the quintessence of the Vedas.

‘And as the sandhya is all that is most sublime in the Vedas, so is the gayatri all that is most sublime in the sandhya. This celebrated prayer obtains for mankind the remission of their sins, plenty, joy, wealth, health, and also ensures their happiness hereafter.

‘They must beware of teaching this prayer to the degraded Sudras. Whoever dared to do so would assuredly go to the infernal regions – he, his father, and his children; and if a Sudra happened to overhear a Brahmin repeating it he would inevitably go to the same place and remain there for all eternity.

‘I have said it, and I repeat it,’ says the author, ‘let them beware of making it known to the Sudras, under pain of eternal damnation.

‘No meditation, penance, sacrifice, knowledge, prayer, can compare in efficacy to the gayatri mantram. Its merits are superexcellent, but it must also be kept a profound secret. It was Brahma himself who composed it expressly for Brahmins.

‘This is the idea which must be formed of the goddess gayatri. Though she appears under the form of a prayer, it must be recognized that she is the Supreme Being, and she must be worshipped as such. Brahma, who composed this mantram, taught it to Indra, who taught it to Yama; he in turn instructed Siva, who taught it to the Brahmins.’

Such are the prayers and ceremonials used by Brahmins when performing the three sandhyas, and such are the extravagant absurdities to which they are bound to conform.

The intense and mysterious solemnity with which they perform all this ceremonial is intended to persuade others that its end and object must be of the highest and most vital importance; the inner meaning being quite beyond the reach of the vulgar and ignorant. Every care is taken to strengthen this opinion; and they use the greatest precautions to exclude the searching eyes of educated persons.

Though assured of the blind credulity of the ignorant masses over whom they hold sway, they are well aware that, if ever the spell should be broken, their charlatanism and cupidity would stand revealed, and they would then become the laughing-stock of the public.

If the sandhya really represents the cream of the Vedas, I do not think that any European will regret the want of a wider acquaintance with these famous books. As an excuse for the fantastic folly of many of their religious performances, Brahmins assert that some, if not all, are only allegories, of which the inner meaning is more rational. This may very likely be true; but I am fully persuaded that the tradition of this inner meaning has been lost. There are beyond question very few Brahmins who would be able to give even the most imperfect idea of what their rites were originally intended to convey. It is an undoubted fact that the greater number of them have nothing in their minds beyond the material and literal fulfillment of the ridiculous ceremonies which they are in the habit of performing. Take, for instance, their celebrated mysterious gayatri, of which each word, they aver, contains a hidden meaning – a meaning, however, which is interpreted in as many different ways as there are castes and sects²

The first four sections of this chapter are taken from the Nitya Karma, or Brahminical ritual. I was acquainted with the second part of the sandhya when I first compiled this work; I had read a full description of its details in a little manuscript of M Pons, formerly a Jesuit missionary in the Carnatic, who died about eighty years ago. He had traveled all over Southern India, and was a good Sanskrit scholar, having written a grammar of that language. But the particulars which this learned man gave appeared to me so extraordinary and so incredible, that I doubted their authenticity and did not venture to use them. I afterwards procured a book in Canara entitled Purohita Asrama Karma or ‘The Religious Observances of a Brahmin Purohita,’ in which I found the same details in almost exactly the same words. I consulted some Brahmins on the subject, and they assured me that they were substantially correct, but that there were some mantrams and ceremonies mentioned which were not in use in the Southern Provinces, though they were used in the north. Indeed I was assured the ceremonial and mantrams vary slightly in different parts, according to the Veda and the sect of those that follow them. But, according to my informants, most Brahmins neglect and are even altogether ignorant of the greater part of them.

The Kshatriyas and the Vaisyas must also perform the sandhya; but it is not as obligatory for them, especially for Vaisyas, as it is for Brahmins. Furthermore, the mantrams and ceremonials of the latter are quite different and not nearly so numerous.

The Jains also perform the sandhya. As for the Sudras, they can only make simple ablutions, without any prayers or ceremonies; but any one who wishes to be distinguished from the vulgar herd, and to be considered a more exalted person, rarely fails to perform the ablutions at least once a day. To see them one would never think that those who perform the sandhya are actuated in any way by a spirit of devotion. The Brahmin gets through all these ceremonies and repeats all these prayers as quickly as possible; he is like a schoolboy gabbling over a lesson he has learnt by heart; and this, like everything else, is all performed perfunctorily and as a duty to be discharged with all possible celerity.

1. Here is another portrait of a man of sin, culled from the Sama-Veda: `The murder of a Brahmin forms the head of the man of sin; drinking intoxicating liquors, the eyes; theft, particularly of gold, the face; the murder of a guru, the ears; the murder of a woman, the nose; the murder of a cow, the shoulders; the rape of another man’s wife, the chest; the wilful production of abortion, the neck; oppression of the innocent and just, the belly; ill treatment of any one who has sought protection, the stomach; to slander your guru, violate a virgin, betray a secret confided to you, or to be false to any one who has relied on you, these are the private parts and the thighs; and the hairs of these are the smaller sins. This man of sin is of gigantic stature, and has a horrible face; he is black, and has wild bright eyes; he delights in torturing mankind.’ –– DUBOIS

2.  A Hindu would contend that the fact of the hidden meaning of the mantrams having been lost does not make the mantrams absurb, but only those who perform the ceremonies without understanding their meaning. –– Ed.

© "Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies" published by Book Faith India, 414-416, Express Tower, Azadpur Commercial Complex, New Delhi. Reprinted with permission

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