https://www.youtube.com/live/Fy3s_llqhWM

I received the following question about this stream…

QUESTION: The cardinal points (“waymarkers”) and dual points (“parks”) got specific names to qualify them differently. But the fixed points (the “lakes”) did not. Why not?

As I mentioned in the stream, it seems to me that the grammar in Text 13 doesn’t really permit this, but it could be overlooked and we could say the four lakes are differentiated as…

payas – which means “for drinking” – and has a connotation of juice or milk.

madhu – which means “honey”

ikṣu-rasa – which means “molases”

mṛṣṭa-jala – which could mean “fresh water”.

However, as I said, the grammar as far as I see doesn’t support breaking the words apart like that. Rather the grammar makes them a sentence like this, “these waters’ (jalāḥ) flavor (payaḥ) [is like] it is blended (mṛṣṭa) with honey (madhu) and molasses (ikṣu-rasa).”

I think these zones don’t need to be named, because they are just a steadying of the qualities from the previous waymarker (identified by a particular “tree”).

QUESTION: What is the point of saying the water is mixed with honey and molases.

Honey and molasses are high-viscocity fluids. In other words, they are slow, semi-solid, and sticky. That is the nature of these fixed sections of the zodiac.

And what are the bathing ceremonies mentioned here? I am aware of makar sankranti and kumbh mela.. one cardinal and one fixed…

There are so many I am not aware of most of them. I believe you could find many of them in Śatapaṭha Brāhmana. There is basically a ceremony for every day of the year, if I remember correctly. There is an altar with bricks laid out to mark the 360 units of the ecliptic, and a marker moves from brick to brick each day. I am not sure if I am getting these details correct, because ritual was never my main area of interest or study. However, a huge portion of Vedic rituals are based on observing the Sun’s progress around Meru, through these waypoints, lakes, and parks.

The reason why the lakes are used in this metaphor is that most people do religious acts by bathing in sacred rivers and lakes.