What is Avani avittam or Avaniyavattam(Palakkad lingo) or
“ Upakarma and Uthsarjana”
By
P.R.Ramachander
Most of the young
people call the festival of Upakarma
as “ festival of Change of
poonal(sacred thread) “ .THis festival is
called by majority of the people
as “avani avittam
(Avittam(Dhanishta) star occurring in the of Avani(August –September called Chingam in
Kerala)
Most of them
feel that Avani avittam festival is celebrated by chanting “Kamo Karsheth” taking
idli and Chutney to break fast , Changing old sacred thread to new and something
called “Kanda Rishi Thrpanam “.
They feel that all these
can easily be accomplished
before 8 AM in the morning and they can go to their school/college /office, They also
know that for some reason they should not take dinner that night .
Even most
learned Vadhyars cooperate
with this method They start
the ritual in a temple or hired
hall sometime around 6 AM. The first
batch is called office batch, the second
one very urgent batch, and so on. Before
start of the every batch , the chief vadhyar will scare you by
telling you that it is the last urgent
batch. This procedure would go on till
around 9 Am .When males return from the function the males are supposed to be received by the
ladies at home by a Harathi.
The real name of Avani avittam is Upa karma
and for all the Vedas it does not
come on the avittam of Avani month for example
Avani avittam is celebrated on Sravana(thiruonam) day for rig vedis
and Sama Vedis observe
it on Hastha Nakshtram.
Upa karma consists of two parts . Upakarma( action Redemption)
and Uthsarjana(giving up doing deva karyams ). These help the already learnt Vedic chants
shine with great vigour. .Any actions done with such strengthened Vedic chants
, would give good and better results. Due to our using Vedic chants for various
purposes as well as our not being in a position to follow all the rules, make
such chanting of Vedas very weak. So it is necessary to do Upakarma and
Uthsarjana every year.
Naturally you would ask “When did Vedas got weak and why is it necessary to strengthen it. Vedas were created by our Supreme God and was handed over to Brahma , who taught it all Prajapathis and
Devas who strengthened what they have learnt by daily chanting it Avani avittam is the day when the Supreme
God gave the Vedas
to Lord Brahma .Vedas get
strengthened by being more and more accurate
, when people who have learnt it
chanted it , the way that it should be chanted.
Since most of us have not learnt to chant Vedas , we may ask “Why or how we
are capable of strengthening the Vedas?”AS a Brahmin we do chant several Vedic manthras during
our nithya karmas like Sandhya
Vandhanas and Pithru Karmas done
annually etc .If we do not do Upakarma we
would be chanting the weakened
Vedic Manthras only.So there is a need
for each of us to do Upakarma so
that the vedic Manthras that
we use are powerful. You may be interested to know that sacred thread celemony(Upa nayanam) alone does
not make us suitable to start
learning Vedas .THis suitability
comes only after our first upakarma(THalai avani avittam).
Since we are
used to do Upakarma in
several avasara batches
starting from 6 am, WE would all be surprised to know that
we should start doing it only after performing Madhyahnikam at 12 noon, followed by Brahma
Yajnam
.
Before doing any important Vedic Karma we always change
our sacred thread(Poonl/Yagnopavitham) .AS Brahmins we are supposed to learn
Vedas(Vedic Uthsarjana ) daily .Since we have not been able to do it, we do ceremony
of redemption and chant “Kamo
karsheth” THis manthra also happens to
be a manthra of redemption to all sins
we have committed.
Then we
chant the Maha sankalpa which tells when we are doing it and at what place and requests God to pardon the very small, small and big
mistakes that we have committed
during the previous year.
After chanting this manthra we are supposed to take bath but what we do nowadays is a sankalpa Snana(Can’t we take bath. We definitely can ) We change the sacred
thread again .Then we do Tharpanam(satify) for kandarshi (the sages
of a particular
Kanda(chapter) of the Vedas,.We
are together then supposed to do Upakarma Homam
and after that we chant
the beginning of several
chapters of the Vedas .This is
followed by Jayadhi Homam.
I am sure when many of you who do kamakarsheth japa, Brahma Yajnam , Maha Sakalpam and Kanda Rishi tharpanam and come back home would be surprised to know that
what you do is a very small portion of the Upakarma Uthsarjana Prayoga
which we are supposed to do
Both
ourselves(for telling Vadhyar that we
need to complete Avani avitaam by 8 am)
and the Vadhyar ,who cuts short
the entire procedure (absolutely improper) for sake of both of us . We are committing a grave mistake.
Possibly next day we have to do another
Prayaschitha for doing the ritual improperly.
And may be that is why we are doing Gayatri japam next day.
