58 E. Mitra — On Human Sacrifices in Ancient India. [Maecb:, 



he prays the water-god Varuna for children, promising to give up the first- 

 born to the god ; a child is born, and Varuna claims it ; the father evades 

 fulfilling his promise under one pretext or another, until the child, grown 

 up to man's estate, runs away from home to escape being sacrificed ; the 

 god, disappointed, afllicts the father with dropsy ; the son, mindful of his 

 filial duty, returns home to save his father, and, meeting a poor Brahman in 

 the way, buys one of his sons for a hvindred head of cattle to offer him as a 

 substitute ; and the victim ultimately escapes through the intei-vention of 

 certain gods. Now, eliminate the element of danger from this story, and the 

 di-amatic and sensational character of the whole would be at once destroyed. 

 If the sacrifice were a symbolical one, why should the man fail to redeem 

 his promise ? There would have been no harm done to his son by repeat- 

 ing a fcAV mantras over him. The son had no reason to run away from 

 home, and to buy a substitute ; and the substitute, a grown up man well 

 versed in the detaDs of sacrifice, had no business to bewail his lot, to 

 forsake, in disgust, his father who had sold him, and to become the adopted 

 son of a stranger and a man of a lower caste. 



The Babu could not also subscribe to the interpretation of the word 

 IPv/rusIiamedlia suggested by the Eev. K. M. Banerjea, as the S'atapatha 

 Brahmana of the White Yajtu* Veda had defined it differently, and no one 

 in the jDresent century could consistently adopt a different interpretation. 

 The enquiiy was, as to what the Veda itself meant by the word, and not 

 what covdd be made of it by the aid of philology. 



The story in the Aitareya Brahmana, which referred to the passing of 

 that part of a man which was fit for offering succcessively to a horse, to an 

 ox, to a sheep, to a goat, and lastly to the earth, was purely allegorical, and 

 intended to eulogise the value of rice offering, and did not set aside the ani- 

 mal sacrifices. The goat was never set aside, and yet it comes under the 

 same category with the horse, which too, if the Vedas are to be at all be- 

 lieved, at one time formed an imj)ortant subject of sacrifice. 



The President, in closing the discussion, expressed the obligation of the 

 Society to Babii Rajendralala Mitra for his paper, as for the discussion it 

 had elicited. Much had been said of the meaning of the word ' ancient,' 

 and in every statement care was taken to give the date of the story or sculp- 

 ture, referred to. To him, however, this seemed a matter of the most 

 secondary importance. Human sacrifice had existed in this country and in 

 others, from the earliest times, and were it not checked by the strong arm of 

 the law, would exist to the jiresent day largely and comparatively widely. 

 In truth, he was not aware of the existence of any race of human beings, 

 among whom human sacrifice had not existed at some period of their his- 

 tory. It had been said to-night that the Persians were an exception ; he 

 must doubt it, and if there were no evidence of it among that people, this 



