Three Ritual Steps between India and Iran

Abstract

Abstract The use of triadic patterns is a well-known modality occurring in some Indo-Iranian mythological contexts. This fact has been considered as a phenomenon too generic, and its presence just noted as an unimportant evidence. But, in reality, this procedure, despite its potentially perplexing background, produces some symbolic implications, whose frequent occurrence should be better observed. For instance, within the Vedic and Brāhmaṇic framework, Viṣṇu makes three steps in order to enlarge the universal space, and for this reason this god is also called Trivikrama-, “Having Three Steps”. The present sequence, with its space-time implications, finds a correspondence in the disposition of the Vedic altar of Fire, which needs three footsteps of ground. Even more fitting and pertinent are the inevitable speculations emerging from the ritual meaning of the pebbles or stones called svayamātr̻ṇṇā, “naturally perforated”, placed by the Adhvaryu in the first, third and fifth layer of the brick-altar of the Agnicayana. They have a patent cosmological identity (see, e.g., ŚB 8.7.3.9–10). Within the Iranian context, references to the number three are equally relevant and not just meaningless. Three are the main steps of the soul of the dead after their meeting with the daēnā-, explicitly corresponding to three different cosmic levels, while the vara- of Yima, and the baršnūmgāh, a place of ritual purification, are divided in three parts, and in any case everything connected with them follows a triadic basis with multiples or submultiples of “three”, or again with fractions with an expressed denominator “three”. The act of piling up the perforated stones on the three layers of the Vedic fire altar presents deep cosmological implications, strictly connected also with the holes through which an imaginary column arises. The act of piling up (cinute) resounds the action to be performed by the soul in the Mazdean choreography of the afterlife, when the bridge (pərətu-) allowing the crossing of the intermediate space (that links earth and heaven) is piled up (by one who is cinuuaṇt-, presumably the soul itself). But piling the bricks and tending the fire are ritual performative actions expressed with the same verb and with actions, which inevitably resonate, as in the image of the third prince appearing within the afterlife choreography presented as a vision to the Sasanian Great Priest Kerdir. These occurrences, already focused on in past studies, evoke direct correspondences in ritual procedures emphasizing a definitive transition into another status, so that any triplication or any trifold implement has a special force and completeness.