---
type: Concept
bundle: mimamsa-dharma
bundle_version: 0.10.0
id: yaga
title: Yāga / Yajña
iast: Yāga
devanagari: याग
description: 'The Vedic sacrificial act, the karma of Mīmāṃsā, a bounded rule-governed performance efficacious through correct enactment and its unseen potency; NOT devotional worship, NOT magic, and a third distinct sense of karma from moral action or physical motion.'
darshana:
- Pūrva-Mīmāṃsā
text_source: Mīmāṃsā Sūtra 2.1.5
tags:
- yaga
- yajna
- mimamsa
- ritual-act
- karma
not:
- term: 'worship (devotional adoration of a deity)'
  why: 'Yāga is not bhakti. The deity in Mīmāṃsā is largely the grammatical dative of the offering, not a personal object of love who must be pleased; efficacy lies in the correctly performed act and its apūrva, not in devotion.'
  instead: 'Render yāga as the enjoined sacrificial act whose efficacy lies in correct performance, not devotional worship.'
- term: 'magic (compelling a result by occult power)'
  why: 'Magic bends nature by a hidden force the operator wields; yāga works by the Veda''''s own enjoined order through apūrva, an impersonal normative-causal link, not an operator''''s power.'
- term: 'karma in the moral or the motion sense'
  why: 'This yāga-karma (ritual action) is a third technical sense of karma, distinct from moral action-and-consequence (dharma-foundation v0.1) and Vaiśeṣika physical motion (nyaya-vaisheshika v0.9). Same word, three darśana-relative objects.'
related:
- /concepts/anga-pradhana.md
- /concepts/apurva.md
- /concepts/phala.md
- /concepts/viniyoga.md
timestamp: '2026-07-08'
okf_version: '0.2'
license: CC BY-SA 4.0
---

# Yāga / Yajña -- याग

**Not:** devotional worship, magic, karma (moral or motion)

## What It Actually Means

In Mīmāṃsā, "karma" first means the enjoined ritual act, the yāga. A yāga is individuated by its principal offering and its deity-dative and built from many subsidiary acts (see anga-pradhana). Its point is not to please a god but to perform, correctly and completely, what the injunction enjoins, thereby generating the apūrva that yields the phala. The devatā is honoured verbally but is not, in classical Mīmāṃsā, the causal agent of the result.

## Audience Metaphor

Think of a precisely notarised procedure whose legal effect follows from doing every step correctly, not from anyone''s goodwill. A yāga is that kind of act: efficacious by correct enactment under the rule, not by devotion and not by magic.

## Citations

1. Mīmāṃsā Sūtra 2.1 and 4.2 on the sacrificial act -- see [references/mimamsa-sutra.md](../references/mimamsa-sutra.md)
2. Śāstra-dīpikā on yāga and devatā -- see [references/sastra-dipika.md](../references/sastra-dipika.md)
