Kāṇḍa 5 · Chapter Overview
From The Krishna Yajurveda — The Taittirīya Saṃhitā, taught by Acharya T Krishnatrey. This lesson is free to read.
<pre data-block="statement"> Kāṇḍa 5 continues the Agnicayana — and here the altar is actually built. Over a year, a great bird-shaped altar of more than a thousand fired bricks is piled, layer by layer, and every single brick is laid with its own mantra. Building becomes liturgy; masonry becomes meditation. Much of this kāṇḍa is explanatory prose that quotes its mantras by their opening words. The complete formulae gather in TS 5.7, and that is where most of what follows comes from: the bull-brick (5.7.2), the year-brick — "the likeness of the year" (5.7.2), the prayer for a hundred autumns of shelter (5.7.2), the thunderbolt brick guarding the four quarters (5.7.3), the realm-bearing brick (5.7.4), the great three-worlds formula tejo 'si (5.7.6), the prayer for radiance among all people (5.7.6), and the astonishing Svayaṃciti — where Agni piles up his own Self (5.7.8). Twelve of them follow. Watch how a heap of clay is turned, mantra by mantra, into a cosmos. </pre>