Priests of the Vedic religion are officiants of the yajna service. As persons trained for the ritual and proficient in its practice, they were called . As members of a social class, they were generically known as vipra "sage" or kavi "seer". Specialization of roles attended the elaboration and development of the ritual corpus over time. Eventually a full complement of sixteen s became the custom for major ceremonies. The sixteen consisted of four chief priests and their assistants.
Chief priests
The older references uniformly indicate the ' as the presiding priest, with perhaps only the adhvaryu as his assistant in the earliest times. The phrase "seven hotars" is found more than once in the Rigveda. Hymn 2.1.2 of Rigveda states it as follows, The above hymn enumerate the priests as the ', ', ', agnīdh, ' and adhvaryu.
The ' was the reciter of invocations and litanies. These could consist of single verses, strophes, or entire hymns, drawn from the
'. As each phase of the ritual required an invocation, the ' had a leading or presiding role.
The
adhvaryu was in charge of the physical details of the sacrifice. According to Monier-Williams, the adhvaryu "had to measure the ground, to build the altar, to prepare the sacrificial vessels, to fetch wood and water, to light the fire, to bring the animal and immolate it," among other duties. Each action was accompanied by supplicative or benedictive formulas, drawn from the yajurveda. Over time, the role of the adhvaryu grew in importance, and many verses of the ' were incorporated, either intact or adapted, into the texts of the yajurveda.
The ' was a chanter of hymns set to melodies drawn from the sāmaveda. This was a specialized role in the major soma sacrifices: a characteristic function of the ' was to sing hymns in praise of the invigorating properties of soma pavamāna, the freshly pressed juice of the soma plant.
The was the reciter of hymns from the ' who was largely silent and observes the procedures and uses Atharvaveda mantras to 'heal' it when mistakes have been made.
The term Brahman in the above hymn 2.1.2 refers to deity Agni of hymn 2.1.1. The rgvedic Brahmanas, Aitareya and Kausitaki, specify seven hotrakas to recite shastras : ', brāhmanācchamsin, maitrāvaruna, ', , agnīdh and acchāvāka. They also carry a legend to explain the origin of the offices of the subrahmanya and the grāvastut.
Purohita
The requirements of the fully developed ritual were rigorous enough that only professional priests could perform them adequately. Thus, whereas in the earliest times, the true sacrificer, or intended beneficiary of the rite, might have been a direct participant, in Vedic times he was only a sponsor, the yajamāna, with the ' or brahman taking his stead in the ritual. In this seconding lay the origins of the growing importance of the purohita. It was not unusual for a purohita to be the ' or brahman at a sacrifice for his master, besides conducting other more domestic rituals for him also. In latter days, with the disappearance of Vedic ritual practice, purohita has become a generic term for "priest".
Assistants
In the systematic expositions of the shrauta sutras, which date to the fifth or sixth century BCE, the assistants are classified into four groups associated with each of the four chief priests, although the classifications are artificial and in some cases incorrect:
With the ':
*the maitrāvaruna
*the acchāvāka
*the grāvastut
With the ':
*the '
*the '
*the subrahmanya
With the adhvaryu:
*the '
*the '
*the '
With the brahman:
*the brāhmanācchamsin
*the agnīdh
*the '
This last classification is incorrect, as the formal assistants of the brahman were actually assistants of the and the adhvaryu.
Philological comparisons
Comparison with the sacred texts of Zoroastrianism, a distinct religion with the same origins, shows the antiquity of terms for priests such as *atharwan and *zhautar "invoker, sacrificer". While *zhautar is well understood, the original meaning of *atharwan is unknown. The word atharvan appears in the Rig Veda. In the Younger Avesta, āθrauuan / aθaurun appears in a context that suggests "missionary," perhaps by metathesis from Indo-Iranian *arthavan "possessing purpose." However, a recent theory indicates that Proto Indo-Iranian *atharwan likely represents a substrate word from the unknown language of the BMAC civilization of Central Asia. It can be analyzed as BMAC *athar-plus the Indo-Iranian possessive suffix*-wan, in which case *atharwan would be "one who possesses *athar". Though the meaning of *athar is unknown, Pinault speculates that it meant "superior force" and connects it to the Tocharian word for "hero". In the Upanishads, atharvan appears for example in atharvāngiras, a compound of atharvan and angiras, either two eponymous rishis or their family names. In present-day Indian Zoroastrian tradition the wordathornan is used to distinguish the priesthood from the laity. These subdivisions, and the terms used to describe them, are relatively recent developments specific to Indian Zoroastrians and although the words themselves are old, the meaning that they came to have for the Parsis are influenced by their centuries-long coexistence with Hinduism. It appears then that the Indian Zoroastrian priests re-adopted the older āθrauuan / aθaurun for its similarity to Hinduism's atharvan, which the Parsi priests then additionally assumed was derived from Avestanātar "fire". This folk-etymology, which may "have been prompted by what is probably a mistaken assumption of the importance of fire in the ancient Indo-Iranian religion". The division of priestly functions among the Hotar, the Udgatar and the Adhvaryu has been compared to the Celtic priesthood as reported by Strabo, with the Druids as high priests, the Bards doing the chanting and the Vates performing the actual sacrifice.
