The function of yajña between practitioners and clients. Rethinking the genesis, appropriation, and control of the practice from the Ṛgveda onwards.

In this paper, I will focus on the construction and promotion of the yajña practice in the different layers of the Ṛgveda Saṃhitā. I will show that in the canonical collection of hymns there are all the data to sustain the proposition that the yajña had become a “practice” through three main purposes: 1) to establish an institutionalized relationship between the practitioner and the client; 2) to gain the consent of a particular social group; 3) to excel among other (brāhmaṇa) responsible for honoring and satisfying the gods. My attempt is to reconstruct the system through which the brāhmaṇas realized their goal to make yajña a symbolic practice for honoring and satisfying gods in the form of the precepts we know from the prose texts.