राजसूय

The tradition & historical record

Rajasuya (Sanskrit: राजसूय, romanized: Rājasūya, lit. 'king's sacrifice') is a śrauta ritual of the Vedic religion. It is ceremony that marks a consecration of a king. According to the Puranas, it refers to a great sacrifice performed by a Chakravarti – universal monarch, in which the tributary princes may also take part, at the time of his coronation, as a mark of his undisputed sovereignty. ¹

The rajasuya is associated with the consecration of a king and is prescribed as a ritual to establish a king's sovereignty. It is described in the Taittiriya corpus, including Apastamba Śrauta Sutra 18.8–25.22. It involves soma pressing, a chariot drive, the king shooting arrows from his bow, and a symbolic "cattle raid": The newly anointed king seizes cattle belonging to his relative, and then gives part of his property to that relative. Also included is a game of throwing dice with the Adhvaryu priest in which the king wins a cow, by which the king is enthroned and the cosmos is regenerated. There is a revealing of the tale of Shunahshepa, a boy who was nearly sacrificed to Varuna on behalf of the sonless king Harishchandra, which hints at a rejected archaic practice of human sacrifice. The Shatapatha Brahmana states that the rajasuya was the means by which a Kshatriya may become a king, and is not suitable for Brahmanas. Historically, the rajasuya was performed by the Indo-Aryan kings, which led to the expansion of their kingdoms during the Iron Age. The kings of Tamilakam performed the rajasuya, attended by monarchs of Lanka; Kharavela, the king of Kalinga, is described to have performed the rajasuya, despite being a Jain; and the Satavahana kings performed the ceremony. The sacrifice was performed by kings throughout the subcontinent; records of its performance in South India at least date until the time of the Vijayanagara Empire. ¹

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Rajasuya”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ¹

Rajasuya is sacrifice performed by the ancient kings of India, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ²

The source record links this tradition to 2 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. ²