The Atiratra Agnicayana ("the building up of the fireplace performed over-night") or piling of the altar of Agni's a Śrauta ritual of the Vedic religion. The entire ritual takes twelve days to perform, in the course of which a great bird-shaped altar, the uttaravedi "northern altar"'s built out of 10,800 bricks. The liturgical text's in chapters 11 to 18 of the White Yajurveda; the corresponding exposition of the ritual's in Books 6 to 9 of the Shatapatha Brahmana. The ritual emerged from p… (More on Agnicayana)