Vol. Ill, No. 4.] Some Notes on the Vedic Sacrifices. 201 



IN.S.] 



ancient Yodic Aryans. It is therefore impossible to assign any date 

 to any of these. But it seems quite probable that the Soma and 

 the animal sacrifices, c,g,^ the Agnistoraa, the Sattras, etc., were prac- 

 tised by the Aryans at a very early period, and the com sacrifices, 

 e.g.^ the Dar^'apiirnaraasa, etc., were of later origin, J^'or, earlier Ar- 

 yans devoted the best of their times in the invention of newer and 

 more nice and complicated observances of the Soma sacrifices. It is 

 for this reason only that we find innumerable kinds of these forms 

 of sacrifice, while the corn sacrifices are so limited in number. 

 This they did when they lived in the mountainous tracts of the 

 Upper Punjab, for the Soma was a native of the mountains of 

 these regions. The Atharva and the Rigvedas describe the Mu- 

 javat Peak, which is indirectly referred to as the home of the 

 Soma, and modern Sdvdns have identified the Miijavat with one of 

 the mountains to the south-west of Kashmir. That the Soma was 

 a creeper found in hilly places is known from the patapatha 

 Brahmana as well. Here we must remember that the Soma 

 sacrifice Avas closely connected with the animal sacrifices. I^o 

 Soma sacrifice, was complete without an animal sacrifice being 

 associated with it. Similarly the animal sacrifices, e.gf., the 

 Afvamedha, included a Soma offering. Thus the one meant the 

 other. 



Xow what I propose to establish is that these animal and 

 Soma sacrifices were the only rituals or ceremonies of the earliest 

 Aryans. In the earliest times w^hen civilization was practically 

 unknown to the Aryans, they used to sacrifice the highest 

 animal — their fellow-creature, man — in their offerings, then 

 with the advancement of civilization, and the gradual develop- 

 ment of the ideas of morality, they gave up that abominable prac- 

 tice and took lower animals, e.g.^ the horse, the cow, the sheep, 

 and, last of all, the goat. The 9atapatha Brahmana directly states 

 in one place that ^'yaparna Sayakayana was the last person who 

 killed these higher animals in the sacrificial rites, after him the 

 goat only was used in them {vide fatapatha Br,, 6-2-1). There is 

 also an Adhikarana in the Mimamsa relating to this. 



Wlienthe Vedic Aryans became still more advanced in civili- 

 zation, they completely did away ^vith the cruel practice of killing 

 animals in their religious ceremonies and offei'ing them to the deities. 

 Henceforth their sacrifices were, for the most part, limited to 

 oblations of corn such as rice, barley, &c. By this, of course, I do 

 not mean to say that the animal sacrifice was totally abolished 

 in the later Vedic society, but all that I intend to assert is that 

 now the majority of the people performed only the non-animal, t.e, 

 the corn and the milk sacrifices. Thus we may conclude the Soma 

 and tlie animal sacrifices were prior to the corn ones. 



1 shall give two proofs — one internal and the other external 

 in support of the above theory. The first, the internal one, is that 

 there is a direct statement in the fatapatha Brahmana about 

 this fact. In the translation of a passage in the ^^^f^patha Brah- 

 mana by Mr. Eggeling, we find that in the beginning they offered 

 up a man as the victim in their sacrificial rites. When he was 



