Jaya: An Illustrated Retelling of the Mahabharata

by Devdutt Pattanaik

the Vedic age that thrived around 1000 BCE, yagna was the dominant ritual that bound society. It was performed by specially trained priests who chanted hymns and made offerings into fire in a bid to invoke cosmic forces and make them do man’s bidding. A Sattra was a yagna performed on a grand scale with hundreds of priests over several years. While rituals helped man cope with the many material challenges of the world, they did not offer man any spiritual explanations about life. For that stories were needed. And so, during yagnas, and between them, bards were called to entertain and enlighten the priests and their patrons with tales. In due course, the tales were given more value than the yagna. In fact, by 500 CE, the yagna was almost abandoned.