88 Bajendralala Mitra — On Human Sacrifices in Ancient India. [No. 1 



The human sacrifices in the temples on the eastern shore of the Mediter- 

 ranean, to which reference has already been made, were often connected with 

 soothsaying, the priests foretelling the future from the appearance of the 

 entrails of the victim, and elsewhere the connexion of human sacrifice with 

 necromancy, magic, sorcery, and other dark arts can be easily pointed out. 

 Some alchemists slaughtered infants to help them in their attempt at dis- 

 covering the elixir of life ; but I doubt if it led to any religious sacrifice. 



The only two instances I am aware of of periodical jail delivery of prisoners 

 sentenced to capital punishment leading to a religious festival, are the horrid 

 rite which keeps the Ashantis in a whirl of excitement for a whole week 

 every year, and that of the Yucatans ; # but they are quite enough to show 

 that the conclusion I wish to draw from them, is perfectly legitimate. 



The Persians were, perhaps, the only nation of ancient times who did 

 not indulge in human sacrifice. As constituting the agricultural section of 

 the great Aryan race, they contented themselves by offering the fruits of the 

 field for the gratification of their divinity. And the Hindus, as more inti- 

 mately connected with them than with the other branches of the Aryan race, 

 we may suppose, did not differ much from the Persians ; but it is also certain 

 that religious differences, depending principally upon the leaning of the Hin- 

 dus in favour of animal sacrifice, made them break off from their brethren, 

 and depart from their primitive home, and what is true of the Persians 

 need not, therefore, necessarily be so of the Hindus. Besides there is nothing 

 to show that they were incapable of doing what their contemporaries, 

 the Assyrians, Egyptians, Greeks, and Eomans did in the way of religious 

 rite, and what appears from the instances quoted above to have been a 

 failing or predeliction common to almost all mankind. They were cer- 

 tainly highly civilized for the time in which they flourished, and the spirit 

 of their institutions was so benign and pacific, that it may strike us as 

 inconsistent to associate with it the disgusting rite of human sacrifice. 

 Arguing upon these premises, Colebrooke and Wilson have come to the con- 

 clusion " that human sacrifices were not authorised by the Veda itself, but 

 were either then abrogated and an emblematic ceremony substituted in their 

 place, or they were introduced in later times by the authors of such works as 

 the Kalika Purana."f As a Hindu writing on the actions of my ancestors — 

 remote though they are, — it would have been a source of great satisfaction to 

 me if I could adopt this conclusion as true ; but I regret I cannot do so 

 consistently with my allegiance to the cause of history. Doubtless the 

 institutions of the Vedic Hindus were of a benign and humane character, and 

 that they did not tolerate brutality to the extent that other ancient nations 

 indulged in, I can well believe ; but it must be added also that benign and 



* Fancourt's History of Yucatan, p. 126. 

 t Journal, E. As. Soc, XIII, p. 107, 



