Panchamahayajna or "The Great Five Sacrifices".
Brahmayajna, pit ryajna, devayajna, bhutayajna, and nryajana are five ceremonial activities required in the dharma canon (texts on religious duty).
These five deeds are mandated daily religious observances for a "twice born" householder, that is, a householder who was born into one of India's three "twice-born" groups—brahmin, kshatriya, or vaishya—and who has acquired the teenage religious initiation known as "second birth."
Each sacrifice (yajna) is directed toward a different class of beings—from the Absolute Reality down to animals—and is satisfied by different actions:
- to Brahman by teaching and studying the Veda,
- to the ancestral spirits (pitr) by offering water (tarpana),
- to the gods (deva) by offering clarified butter into the sacred fire,
- to the animals and social outcasts (bhut) by putting out food for them,
- and to human beings (nr)
In
the centuries since the dharma literature was written, Hindu life has undergone
significant changes in emphasis, and while some of these are still relevant in
modern Hindu life—for example, the emphasis on hospitality to visitors—the
majority of the others have been obliterated or replaced by other religious
forms.
