The Syena ritual is a sort of Soma-(offering)-type srauta-ritual, and belongs to the ‘Sadyaskra’ group, distinctive of its short term. This ritual is a modificatory type (vikrti), contrasted to the standard type (prakrti), viz. Jyotistomaritual.
The Syena ritual was well known in the Mimamsa literature by its imprecational use. But its entire picture is rarely grasped by modern scholars, because of the fragmented descriptions of such modificatory types as this in the Vedic ritual literature. This study aims to present the outline of the Syena ritual by piecing together the fragmented descriptions of it among the Srautasutras. This paper focuses on the ritualistic facilities of the Syena ritual. From the selection of a sacrificial arena (devayajana) to the squeezing and offering of ‘soma’ (ksullabhisavana), the characteristic unlucky utensils of this rite are cited one by one, contrastively with the standard (prakrti) type. In the ritualistic context of the Syena ritual, a word and a matter have the same value of existence, so arrangement of matter is equal to that of word. The principle of grasping by name (namagraha) was also adopted in order to form an imaginary causal link to the enemy's death within this rite.
