Camakam, anuvāka 8 — the altar and its furniture
The popular claimFuel, grass, altar, hearths, ladles, cups, pressing-stones, posts. The rite asks for its own equipment.
The seventh anuvāka asked for the cups. The eighth asks for everything else on the ground — the inventory of a soma-sacrifice's site, from the firewood to the bath at the end.
The fire and its bed
Idhmaś ca me barhiś ca me. — Firewood, and the strewn grass. Idhma — the fuel-sticks laid for the fire; barhis — the kuśa grass spread on the ground for the gods to sit on, and the word the Ṛgveda uses for the whole seat of the sacrifice.
Vediś ca me dhiṣṇiyāś ca me. — The altar, and the hearths. Vedi — the raised, hourglass-shaped altar cut in the earth, on which offerings are placed; dhiṣṇya — the small side-hearths, one for each of the chanting priests, made of a mound of earth with a fire on it.
The vessels
Srucaś ca me camasāś ca me. — The ladles, and the cups. Sruc — the long wooden ladle (juhū, upabhṛt, dhruvā are its three kinds) with which ghee is poured; camasa — the square wooden cup from which the priests drink the soma.
Grāvāṇaś ca me svaravaś ca me. — The pressing-stones, and the sounding-posts. Grāvan — the stones with which the soma-stalks are beaten; svaru — Sāyaṇa: the wooden pegs or splinters of the sacrificial post, or the posts themselves, which "sound" when struck.
Uparavāś ca me'dhiṣavaṇe ca me. — The resonance-holes, and the two pressing-boards. Uparava — four holes dug under the pressing-place so that the beating of the stones resounds; adhiṣavaṇa — the two boards between which the soma is pressed.
Droṇakalaśaś ca me vāyavyāni ca me. — The wooden trough, and the wind-cups. Droṇa-kalaśa — the large wooden vessel into which the pressed soma is strained; vāyavya — cups for Vāyu, the wind, the first god to receive the soma.
Pūtabhṛc ca ma ādhavanīyaś ca me. — The purified-holder, and the mixing vessel. Pūtabhṛt — the vessel that holds the strained, "purified" soma; ādhavanīya — the vessel in which the soma is stirred with water before pressing.
The ground
Āgnīdhraṁ ca me havirdhānaṁ ca me. — The fire-kindler's place, and the oblation-shed. Āgnīdhra — the hearth and shed of the Agnīdh, the priest who kindles the fires; havirdhāna — the shed with two carts in it, where the soma is kept.
Gṛhāś ca me sadaś ca me. — The houses, and the seat. Gṛha — the huts on the ground for the sacrificer and his wife; sadas — the large shed where the priests sit and chant, with the dhiṣṇya hearths in a row.
The offerings and the end
Purodāśāś ca me pacatāś ca me. — The rice-cakes, and the cooked offerings. Puroḍāśa — the cake of ground rice baked on potsherds, the standard vegetable offering; pacata — whatever is cooked.
Avabhṛthaś ca me svagākāraś ca me. — The final bath, and the cry of "well-gone". Avabhṛtha — the bath at the end of the soma-sacrifice, in which the sacrificer and the vessels are washed in a river and the rite is closed; svagākāra — the utterance svagā, "well-gone" or "well-offered", the priest's word that an offering has been accepted. The anuvāka ends with the sound that ends the rite.
What the eighth anuvāka is
A walk across the sacrificial ground in the order of use: fuel and grass, altar and hearths, ladles and cups, the pressing apparatus, the vessels the soma passes through, the sheds and huts, the cakes and the cooked food, the bath and the closing word. For a reader who has never seen one, it is the plan of a yajña in twenty-two nouns. For the reciter, it is the section that asks the sacrifice to be fit in every piece of its own equipment.
Why a petition asks for ladles
The Camakam's logic is that nothing is outside what the sacrifice can put in order — not the body (first anuvāka), not the grains (fourth), not the gods (sixth), and not the sacrifice's own tools. A rite that asked only for its results, and not for its means, would be asking for something it had not earned. The eighth anuvāka is the rite asking to be done right.
What this page does not say
It does not reconstruct the full ground-plan, which differs between the Śrauta schools, and it does not claim that every identification above is beyond argument — svaru and uparava are read differently by different commentators. It opens the twenty-two items so that a reciter who says idhmaś ca me barhiś ca me knows he is asking for firewood and grass.
Source — Taittiriya Samhita 4.7.8 (Camakam, eighth anuvaka), Krishna Yajurveda; Sayana's bhashya on the Taittiriya; the Shrauta Sutras on the layout of the sacrificial ground; Bhattabhaskara's commentary on the Camakam
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