ಋಗುಪಾಕರ್ಮ | Rig Upakarma

Upakarma means beginning. It is the rite by which the year of Vedic study is formally opened: the old sacred thread is set aside and a new one worn, the rishis of one’s lineage are offered tarpana, an expiation is made for the study neglected in the year past, and the first lesson of the new year is read.

Upakarma is not one day. Each Veda has its own, and a household follows the shakha it belongs to and not the one its neighbours keep.

The unusual rule

Rig Upakarma is fixed to a nakshatra, not a tithi. It is kept on the day in the month of Shravana on which the moon stands in the nakshatra Shravana at sunrise.

This is worth pausing on, because nearly everything else in the calendar works the other way. A tithi measures the angle between the moon and the sun, so it tracks the phase of the moon and sits at a definite place in the fortnight. A nakshatra measures where the moon stands against the fixed stars, which has nothing to do with the sun. Fixing a rite to a nakshatra therefore detaches it from the fortnight entirely: Shravana nakshatra can fall in either paksha of the month, and Anudina’s rule for this observance carries no paksha at all. See Nakshatra: the moon’s lodging.

There is a reason the nakshatra and the month share a name. A lunar month is named for the nakshatra near which its full moon falls, so Shravana nakshatra in the month of Shravana is at or close to the full moon, usually within a day or two of it. Usually, but not always, and that is exactly where Yajur Upakarma, which takes the full moon itself, comes apart from this one. In some years the two are the same day and in some years they are days apart.

The three Upakarmas

• Rigvedins keep it on Shravana nakshatra in Shravana.
• Yajurvedins keep it on the full moon of Shravana.
• Samavedins keep it on Hasta nakshatra in the bright fortnight of Bhadrapada, a month later.

In Karnataka most Smarta families follow the Taittiriya recension of the Krishna Yajurveda and so keep the purnima day. Rigvedins are numerous in coastal Karnataka and among Deshastha and Konkan families, and they keep their own day even when the larger community around them is keeping another.

What is done

The morning begins with a bath, ideally in a river or a tank. The rite proper consists of the prayashchitta japa, the offering of the new yajnopavita, the tarpana to the rishis, and the reading of the opening lines of the Veda. The following morning is Gayatri Pratipat, on which the arrears of the year’s japa are made good.

The complementary rite, Utsarjana, formally closes the term of study some months later. Few households now keep it, though the texts treat the pair as one thing.