1876.] Bajendralala Mitra— On Human Sacrifices in Ancient India. 83 



passage from Manetho to show that "formerly in the city of Idithya, 

 they were wont to burn even men alive, giving them the name of 

 Typhous, and winnowing their ashes through a sieve to scatter and disperse 

 them in the air ; which human sacrifices were performed in public, at a 

 stated season of the year during 873."* Herodotus denied the correctness 

 of these statements ; and Sir Gardner Wilkinson argues that " it is di- 

 rectly contrary to the usages of the Egyptians, and totally inconsistent 

 with the feeling of a civilized people ;" but religious observances and social 

 customs are such irreconcilable riddles that a priori arguments founded on 

 them appear to me to be simply unfit for the elucidation of truth. Tew would 

 question the civilization of the Eomans — so much higher than that of the 

 Egyptians — or admitting it deny the fact that they devoted their prisoners-of- 

 war to carnage for the entertainment of the people of their metropolis ; 

 not to advert to their practice of sacrificing human victims until so recent- 

 ly as the first century before the Christian era, when (A. U. C. 657) during 

 the consulship of Cneius Cornelius Lentulus and P. Licinius Crassus a decree 

 was promulgated by the senate prohibiting human sacrifices. f The horrors 

 of the Inquisition during the middle ages may also be referred to, to show 

 how the immolation of large numbers of men may be consistent with a 

 high state of civilization and a humane religion. Certain it is that the 

 principles on which human sacrifices got into currency were fully recog- 

 nised by the Egyptians ; thus they held that " sacrifices ought not to be 

 of things in themselves agreeable to the gods, but, on the contrary, of crea- 

 tures into which the souls of the wicked have passed" (Plutarch, des Is. 

 s. 31) ; they offered the entrails of the dead to certain inferior gods or 

 genii ; and their kings, after every victory, repaired to the temple of their 

 chief divinity, " performed sacrifice, offered suitable thanksgivings", and 

 lastly " dedicated the spoil of the conquered enemy, and expressed their gra- 

 titude for the privilege of laying before the feet of the god, the giver of 

 victory, those prisoners they had brought to the vestibule of the divine 

 abode. "J It may be that the actual sacrifice of men took place at a very 

 early period, and it was subsequently replaced by emblematic offering ; but 

 there is no reason to doubt that at one time or other the rite of anthropo- 

 thusia did obtain currency among them. Wilkinson, with all his anxiety to 

 defend the credit of the Egyptians, is constrained to admit this.§ 



The ancient Jews were in many respects better than their neighbours, 

 but the idea of human sacrifice seems not to have been unknown to them. 

 When Abraham was commanded to offer up his son, he did not even evince 



* Athen., IV. p. 172. 



f Pliny, XXX, c. 3. 



| Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians II, p. 286. 



§ Ibid., II. p. 343. 



