Priests of the Vedic religion were officiants of the yajna service. As persons trained for the ritual and proficient in its practice, they were called ṛtvij ("regularly-sacrificing"). As members of a social class, they were generically known as vipra ("sage") or kavi ("seer").
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Specialization of roles attended the elaboration and development of the ritual corpus over time. Eventually a full complement of sixteen ṛtvijas became the custom for major ceremonies. The sixteen consisted of four chief priests and their assistants, with each of the four chief priests playing a unique role:
In the systematic expositions of the shrauta sutras, [1] which date to the fifth or sixth century BCE, the assistants are classified into four groups associated with each of the four chief priests, although the classifications are artificial and in some cases incorrect:
This last classification is incorrect, as the formal assistants of the brahman were actually assistants of the hotṛ and the adhvaryu.
A similar attempt at symmetry, as well as an attempt to inflate the importance of the Atharvaveda, was a claim (in the Gopatha Brahmana) that this veda was the province of the brahman: allegedly, just as specific vedas were associated with the other three chief priests, the Atharvaveda was the fourth and presumably superior veda for the fourth and senior most of the chief priests. This theoretical fancy had no basis in fact or likelihood, as the Atharvaveda made no contribution to the liturgy of the solemn high rituals. In practice, the brahman function was usually performed by a bahvṛca ("one who has many verses", i.e. a Rgvedin), suggesting a historical split of the duties of the hotṛ in the development of the brahman as a distinct role.
The older references uniformly indicate the hotṛ as the presiding priest, with perhaps only the adhvaryu as his assistant in the earliest times. The phrase "seven hotars" is found more than once in the Rgveda. RV.2.1.2 enumerates them as the hotṛ, potṛ, neṣṭṛ, agnīdh, prashāstṛ (meaning the maitrāvaruna), adhvaryu and brahman (meaning the brāhmanācchamsin). The rgvedic Brahmanas, Aitareya and Kausitaki, specify seven hotrakas to recite shastras (litanies): hotṛ, brāhmanācchamsin, maitrāvaruna, potṛ, neṣṭṛ, agnīdh and acchāvāka. They also carry a legend to explain the origin of the offices of the subrahmanya and the grāvastut.
The requirements of the fully developed ritual were rigorous enough that only professional priests could perform them adequately. Thus, whereas in the earliest times, the true sacrificer, or intended beneficiary of the rite, might have been a direct participant, in Vedic times he was only a sponsor, the yajamāna, with the hotṛ or brahman taking his stead in the ritual. In this seconding lay the origins of the growing importance of the purohita (literally, "one who is placed in front"), a term originally for a domestic chaplain, especially of a prince. It was not unusual for a purohita to be the hotṛ or brahman at a sacrifice for his master, besides conducting other more domestic (gṛhya) rituals for him also. In latter days, with the disappearance of vedic ritual practice, purohita has become a generic term for "priest".
Comparison with the sacred texts of Zoroastrianism, a distinct religion with the same origins, shows the antiquity of terms for priests such as atharvan (cognate to Avestan athravan) and hotar (Av. zaotar) "invoker, sacrificer". While hotar/zaotar is well understood, the original meaning of atharvan/athravan is unknown. The word atharvan/athravan does not appear in either the Vedas or in the oldest Iranian texts, and in the Younger Avesta appears in a context that suggests "missionary," perhaps by metathesis from Indo-Iranian *arthavan "possessing purpose." In the Upanishads, the term appears for example in atharvāngiras, a compound of atharvan and angiras, either two eponymous rishis or their family names.
In present-day Indian Zoroastrian (Parsi) tradition the word athornan is used to distinguish the priesthood from the laity (the behdin). These subdivisions (in the historical Indian context, castes), and the terms used to describe them, are relatively recent developments specific to Indian Zoroastrians and although the words themselves are old, the meaning that they came to have for the Parsis are influenced by their centuries-long coexistence with Hinduism. It appears then that the Indian Zoroastrian priests re-adopted the older athravan (in preference to the traditional, and very well attested derivative asron) for its similarity to Hinduism's arthavan, which the Parsi priests then additionally assumed was derived from Avestan atar "fire". This folk-etymology, which may "have been prompted by what is probably a mistaken assumption of the importance of fire in the ancient Indo-Iranian religion" (Boyce, 1982:16).
There is no evidence to sustain the supposition that the division of priestly functions among the Hotar, the Udgatar and the Adhvaryu is comparable to the Celtic priesthood as reported by Strabo, with the Druids as high priests, the Bards doing the chanting and the Vates performing the actual sacrifice.