Camakam, anuvāka 7 — the soma cups, by name
The popular claimTwenty-nine cups of soma, each with a name and a god. The Camakam asks for the sacrifice's own vessels.
The seventh anuvāka is the hardest in the Camakam to follow without the rite in front of you, because it is a list of the grahas — the cups of soma drawn and offered at an Agniṣṭoma — in roughly the order they are drawn. A reciter who knows the sound may not know that each word was once a ladle.
The first cups
Aṁśuś ca me raśmiś ca me. — The aṁśu cup, and the raśmi. Aṁśu — the soma-stalk, and the cup drawn first from its pressing; raśmi — the ray, a cup named for the sun's beam.
Adābhyaś ca me'dhipatiś ca me. — The adābhya, the undeceivable, and the adhipati, the overlord. Two cups drawn before the main pressing, named for qualities of the god who receives them.
Upāṁśuś ca me'ntaryāmaś ca me. — The upāṁśu, the silent cup, and the antaryāma, the inner-restrainer. The first two cups of the morning pressing, offered without loud recitation; the commentators pair them with the out-breath and the in-breath.
The paired-god cups
Aindravāyavaś ca me maitrāvaruṇaś ca ma āśvinaś ca me. — The cup for Indra-and-Vāyu, the cup for Mitra-and-Varuṇa, the cup for the Aśvins. Three cups drawn in sequence at the morning pressing, each for a pair of gods, in this order in every Śrauta Sūtra.
Pratiprasthānaś ca me śukraś ca me manthī ca me. — The pratiprasthāna — the cup drawn by the priest of that name, the adhvaryu's assistant; the śukra, the bright cup; the manthin, the stirred cup, soma mixed with barley meal.
The cups of the whole
Āgrayaṇaś ca me vaiśvadevaś ca me. — The āgrayaṇa, the first-fruits cup, the largest draw of the pressing; the vaiśvadeva, the cup for the All-Gods.
Dhruvaś ca me vaiśvānaraś ca me. — The dhruva, the fixed cup, kept undrunk through the day; the vaiśvānara, the cup for Agni as belonging to all men.
Ṛtugrahāś ca me'tigrāhyāś ca me. — The season-cups, and the extra cups. Ṛtugraha — twelve cups drawn for the seasons; atigrāhya — three additional cups, drawn beyond the standard set.
The afternoon cups
Aindrāgnaś ca me vaiśvadevaś ca me marutvatīyāś ca me māhendraś ca me. — The cup for Indra-and-Agni; the All-Gods cup again, this time at the midday pressing; the marutvatīya cups, for Indra-with-the-Maruts, three of them; the māhendra, the Great-Indra cup, the midday's chief.
Ādityaś ca me sāvitraś ca me sārasvataś ca me pauṣṇaś ca me. — The cup for the Ādityas; the cup for Savitṛ; the cup for Sarasvatī; the cup for Pūṣan. Evening-pressing cups, each for one deity.
Pātnīvataś ca me hāriyojanaś ca me. — The pātnīvata, the wives' cup — offered to Agni with the wives of the gods, and drunk by the sacrificer's wife's priest; the hāriyojana, the yoked-bays cup, the last of the day, named for Indra's two bay horses being harnessed for the journey home. The list ends where the rite ends.
What the seventh anuvāka is
An inventory of the soma sacrifice, in order: from the stalk to the horses. The Camakam is asking that every cup of the rite be fit — that the sacrifice it is chanted within go right in every draw. This is the anuvāka that shows most plainly that the Camakam is a Śrauta text: it assumes a listener who knows what a manthin is.
What it means now
Almost nobody who chants the Rudram today has stood at an Agniṣṭoma. The words are chanted as names. This page gives them back as cups, so that the reciter who says hāriyojanaś ca me at the end of the seventh anuvāka knows it means the bays being yoked.
What this page does not say
It does not reconstruct the full sequence of the Agniṣṭoma, which the Śrauta Sūtras do in hundreds of pages and which differs between schools, and it does not claim the identifications above are beyond dispute where the commentators dispute them — adābhya and adhipati especially. It opens the twenty-nine cups by name so that the seventh anuvāka is heard as what it is: the sacrifice, asking for itself.
Source — Taittiriya Samhita 4.7.7 (Camakam, seventh anuvaka), Krishna Yajurveda; Sayana's bhashya on the Taittiriya; the Shrauta Sutras (Apastamba, Baudhayana) on the graha sequence of the Agnishtoma; Bhattabhaskara's commentary on the Camakam
Every claim on this site names its source, and every calculator shows its arithmetic.