of human sacrifices as a generally recognised practice, at the time when it originated, would rather seem to mark this particular case as an exceptional one. For, if it were not so, how comes it that the king's four high-priests — who, if any, must have been looked upon as thorough masters of the sacrificial science — should have refused to assist in the immolation of the human victim ordered by the deity, leaving it to be accomplished by the sullied hands of the wretched father ? But there is another feature of the story which cannot but strike one as very peculiar. Why should the childless king pray for the birth of a son oply to make a sacrifice of him ? He has been told to do so by the holy sageN&rada: is one then to understand that the sage's advice, as well as Varuf/a's consent, is given merely to try the king's faith and truthfulness ? If so, the case is similar to that of Abraham s sacrifice in the land of Moriah, only that the king's faith proves less intense and exalted — perhaps more humanly faint-hearted— than that of the Jewish patriarch. But the most striking feature of the legend doubtless is the part played in it by the unnatural father ; and this feature seems indeed to impart to the tale something of the character of an allegorical representation of the contrast between a barbarous (and perhaps earlier) and a more civilised phase of life and moral feeling ^ In this respect two points deserve to be noticed, viz. the coarseness of the synonymous names (* dog's tail ') of the three sons of the Br4hman * ; and the fact that the latter belongs to the Ahgiras stock, a name intimately associated with super-
rescued from the stake, or from (three) stakes to which he was bound either for sacrifice, or, as Roth prefers, for torture.
^ In the Sabhaparvan of the Mahabhfirata (IT, 6275 scqq.), as was first pointed out by Lassen, Krish»a accuses G^arisandha, king of Magadha and Aedi, residing at Malhurd, of having carried off numerous vanquished kings and princes to his city, and keeping them confined in his mountain stronghold with a view to afterwards sacrificing them (at his RS^siiya) to the lord of Uma (Rudra) ; adding subsequently (v. 864) that • the immolation of men was never seen at any time.'
» His own name • A^Sgarte,' on the other hand, is taken by the St. Petereburg Dictionary to mean 'one who has nothing to swallow,* and would thus be merely descriptive of his condition of life.
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IN TRODUCTION. XXX Vll
stitious rites ^ on the one hand, and with the ritual of the fire-altar * on the other.
Now, it is exactly in connection with the building of the fire-altar that the clearest, and most unmistakable trace of an old practice of human sacrifices — or rather of the slaying of men for sacrificial purposes — occurs. In laying down the bottom layer of the altar, the pan which had been used by the Sacrificer for carrying about the sacred fire for a year is built into this layer, with heads of the five recognised sacrificial animals ^ — man, horse, ox, sheep, and goat — put therein, in order to impart stability to the^altar (5at. Br. VII, 5, 2, i seqq.). In a previous passage of the Brdhmawa* (I, 2, 3, 6 seq.) where the relative value of non-animal offering-materials and the five sacrificial animals is discussed, it was stated that, whilst the gods were making use of one after another of these animals, the sacrificial essence gradually passed from one to the other, thus rendering the previous one useless for sacrifice, until it finally passed into the earth whence it entered the rice and barley afterwards used for sacrificial dishes. The general purport of this passage would seem to be to indicate a gradual tendency towards substituting the lower for the higher animals, and ultimately vegetable for animal offer- ings ; though, as a matter of fact, animals continued of
^ Viz. in their connection with the Atharva-veda. In Mahdbh. V, 548-51 Angiras praises Indra by means of * AtharvavedamanlraiA.' Cf. Weber, Ind. Stud. I, p. 297.
' Both in making the fire-pan (ukhd) and in laying down the bricks of the fire-altar, the expression ^angirasvat* (as in the case of Angiras) frequently occurs in the formulas ; cf. VI, i, 2, a8 ; 3, i> 38 ff. ; 4, if i V*
' All that is said in the Brahmaifa regarding the headless bodies of the Bve victims is (VI, 2, i, 7 seqq.) that Pra^pati, having cut oflf the heads, and put them on (the altar, i. c. on himself), plunged four of the trunks into the water, and brought the sacrifice to a completion by (offering) the he-goat (not a he- goat, as translated), and that he subsequently gathered up the water and mud (^clay) in which those corpses had lain, and used them for making bricks for the altar. The view that the other four bodies should likewise be offered is rejected by the author, who rather seems to suggest that they should be allowed to float away on the water.
* A very similar passage occurs in Ait. Br. VI, 8, on which cp. Max Miiller, History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, p. 420.
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xl DATAPATH A-BRAHMAiVA.
again adds further particulars, viz. that the man is to be a BrAhma/fa of the Atreya family, bought (or hired) for a thousand cows, and that he is to enter the river till the water flows into his mouth. Now Prof. Weber is of opinion that this ceremony would be meaningless if the man were not actually drowned. I fail, however, to see the necessity of this assumption, seeing that even a purely symbolical interpretation of the ceremony will give it all the sig- nificance of the real act. That the Ya^us texts contain nothing that could make one suspect that the man was actually drowned is beyond doubt ; but even 5irikhiyana's statement that the water is to flow into his mouth is probably only meant to suggest the nearness and semblance of death by drowning. Otherwise the oblation could hardly have been performed in anything like a decent form. Besides, ilhkh^yana further states that, after the completion of the oblation, * they drive him (the man) out, thinking that the guilt of the village-outcasts is (thereby) driven out ^' Here the verb * ni//-sidh' could hardly have been used if the man was to be driven farther into the water. What is meant is probably that the man was to be driven out from the water, and possibly also from the village, to live an anchorite's life in the forest.
If now we turn our attention to the Purushamedha, or
* human sacrifice ' proper, we find that the Ya^s texts, as
far as they deal with this ceremony at alP, treat it as
* The compound * ni/«hiddhapapmdna^ (apagrdma^) * may possibly be meant in the sense that the evil deeds of the outcasts are driven out (prevented from troubling the peace of Uie village) ; KSty. XX, 8, 17-18, however, states that when the Sacrificer has stepped out (of the water), evil-doers enter (to bathe in the water) without having performed any (other) rites, and that they are then said to be * purified by the Axvamedha.*
* Besides the description of the ceremony in the present work (XIII, 6, 1-2, 30), only the Taittirtya-brahmawa (III, 4) seems to refer to it, enumerat- ing merely the would-be victims who, according to Apastamba, as quoted by SSya«a, are eventually set free. Professor Weber's suggestion that they may possibly at one time have been intended to be all of them slaughtered can hardly have been meant seriously. One might as well suppose that, at the A^vamedha, all the ' evil-doers ' who, according to Katyiyana, are to bathe in the river, were meant to be drowned.
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INTRODUCTION. xli
a purely symbolical performance. A large number of men and women, apparently intended to represent all classes of the community, are bound to eleven sacrificial posts, and after the necessary rites, concluding with the *paryagni- kara^a ' — or the carrying of fire round the oblations — have been performed on them, they are one and all set free ; the sacrifice then proceeding with the offering of the set of eleven animal victims. That the ceremony in this form, with its pedantically elaborate array of symbolic human victims, cannot possibly lay claim to any very great antiquity is self-evident; the only question is whether it has not come to take the place of some other form of human sacrifice. Now, after the foregoing statement of facts, it would be idle to deny that the existence, at one time, of a simple form of human sacrifice is not only quite possible, but is indeed highly probable ; and it would be no more than might be expected, if such a practice should eventually have revolted the moral sense of the more refined classes of the community ^, just as it happened, little more than a hundred years ago, in the case of the scarcely less odious practice of the burning of witches in Christian lands.
The practice of human sacrifices seems, however, to receive evidence of a yet more direct and unmistakable kind than the facts hitherto mentioned, from the ceremonial of the Purushamedha, as set forth in the 5dnkh^yana and Vaitdna Siitras. If this evidence has been reserved here to the last, it is because there seems reason to believe that, in the form in which it is presented in those works, the sacrifice was never actually performed, and probably never meant to be performed, but that we have here to do with a mere theoretical scheme intended to complete the sacrificial system. The importance of the subject makes it, however, desirable that we should take a somewhat closer view of the procedure of the * human sacrifice,* as laid down in those two SOtras.
' When the practice became generaUy recognised that the Sacrificer (and priests) should eat a portion of the offered victim, this alone would, as Professor Weber suggests, have tended to make human sacrifices impracticable.
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xHi 5'ATAPATHA-BRAHMAi^rA.
54nkh. XVI, lo, i. Pra^pati, having offered the A,nra- medha, beheld the Purushamedha : what he had not gained by the Ajvamedha, all that he gained by the Purusha- medha * ; and so does the sacrificer now, in performing the Purushamedha, gain thereby all that he had not gained by the A^amedha. a, 3. The whole of the A^amedha ceremonial (is here performed) ; and an addition thereto. 4-8. First oblations to Agni Kdma (desire), A. Ditrt (the giver), and A. Pathikrft (the path-maker) ... 9. Having bought a BrAhma«a or a Kshatriya for a thousand (cows) and a hundred horses, he sets him free for a year to do as he pleases in everything except breaches of chastity. 10. And they guard him accordingly. 11. For a year there are (daily) oblations to Anumati (approval), Pathyi Svasti (success on the way), and Aditi. 12. Those (three daily oblations) to Savitr? ^ in the reverse order. 13. By way of revolving legends (the Hotr^' recites) NirajawsAni . . . — XVI, II, 1-33 enumerate the NAraj-awsdni ^, together with the respective Vedic passages. — XVI, 12, 1-7. There are twenty-five stakes, each twenty-five cubits long . . . ; and twenty- five Agnishomiya victims. 8. Of the (three) Ajvamedha days the first and last (are here performed). 9-1 1. The second (day) is a pa^y&avimi-a-stoma one. .. 12. The Man, a Gomriga, and a hornless (polled) he-goat — these are the Pr^^patya * (victims). 13. A Bos Gaurus, a Gayal, an elk (jarabha), a camel, and a M&yu Kimpurusha (? shrieking monkey) are the anustarawaA. 14-16. And the (other) victims in groups of twenty-five for the twenty-five seasonal deities ... 17. Having made the adorned Man smell (kiss) the chanting-ground, (he addresses him) with the eleven verses {Rzg-v, X, 15, i-ii) without *om,' — *Up shall rise (the Fathers worthy of Soma), the lower, the
* The Ariramedha section of the same work begins: — Pro^&pati desired, * May I gain all my desires, may I nttain aU attainments.* He beheld this three days* sacrificial performance, the Ajvamedha, and took it, and offered with it; and by offering with it he gained all his desires, and attained all attainments.
* See XIII, 4, a, 6-17. » See p. xxxii.
* See XIII, a, 2, 2 seqq.
