Sarvamedha
सर्वमेध
Imperial yajnas performed only by a consecrated king to mark sovereignty, succession, or paramount status — historically the apex of Vedic ritual.
Category
Royal / imperial yajna
Duration
10
Priests required
17 ritviks
Purpose
A ten-day all-encompassing royal yajna in which, according to the Shrauta texts, the patron offers a portion of every kind of being or substance available to him — culminating in his total ritual renunciation and withdrawal to forest life. It functioned as the apex sannyasa-yajna, marking the king's passage from sovereignty to vanaprastha.
Deities invoked
- • Prajapati
- • Vishvedevas (all the gods collectively)
Mantra source
Shukla Yajurveda 32, Krishna Yajurveda Taittiriya Aranyaka, Shatapatha Brahmana 13.7, Aitareya Brahmana 8
Material offerings
- • Symbolic portions of every category of offering enjoined in the Shrauta corpus — including, in the historical Vedic-era texts, animal offerings forming the climactic pashu sequence
- • Soma
- • Ghee
- • Rice cakes
- • Distribution of the patron's entire wealth to the priesthood at the conclusion
Items listed are those prescribed in the Shrauta texts. This page does not provide procedural instruction.
Modern status
Not performed in any living tradition today
Not performed in any living tradition. The Sarvamedha endures primarily in textual study as an early Indian model of the king-renunciate transition.
Historical significance
The Sarvamedha represents the textual outer limit of the royal yajna sequence — the rite at which a sovereign is said to give away literally everything and pass into renunciation. Its description in the Shatapatha Brahmana is one of the earliest formal Indian articulations of the link between kingship and ultimate world-renunciation, a theme later central to the Buddhist and Upanishadic critique of the ritual order. This entry is provided strictly as scriptural and historical reference.