1876.] Bajendralala Mitra— Ow Human Sacrifices in Ancient India. 89 



humane as was the spirit of the ancient Hindu religion, it was not at all op- 

 posed to animal sacrifice ; on the contrary, most of the principal rites requir- 

 ed the immolation of large numbers of various kinds of beasts and birds. 

 One of the rites enjoined required the performer to walk deliberately into 

 the depth of the ocean, and drown himself to death. This was called Ma- 

 Mprasthdna, and is forbidden in the present age. Another, an expiatory one, 

 required the sinner to burn himself to death, on a blazing pyre— the Tush- 

 dnala. This has not yet been forbidden ; and it is what Calanus performed 

 in the presence of Alexander the Great. The gentlest of beings, the simple- 

 minded women of Bengal, were for a long time in the habit of consigning 

 their first-born babes to the sacred river Ganges at Sagar Island, and this 

 was preceded by a religious ceremony, though it was not authorised by any 

 of the ancient rituals. For centuries men have courted death under the 

 wheels of Jagannatha's car, under the delusion of that being the most merito- 

 rious act of devotion which they could perform, and with the fond assurance 

 that they would thereby secure for themselves the highest reward in a future 

 life. And if the spirit of Hindu religion has tolerated, countenanced, or pro- 

 moted such acts, it would not be by any means unreasonable or inconsistent 

 to suppose that it should have, in primitive times, recognised the slaughter 

 of human beings as calculated to appease, gratify, and secure the grace of, 

 the gods. 



But to turn from presumptive evidence to the facts recorded in the 

 Vedas. The earliest reference to human sacrifice occurs, according to the 

 Hindus, in that most ancient record of the Aryan race, the SarLhita of the Big 

 Veda, to which obviously Colebrooke and Wilson refer by the use of the word 

 Veda in the singular number. The first book of that work includes seven 

 hymns* supposed to have been recited by one S'unahsepha when he was bound 

 to a stake, preparatory to being immolated. He prays earnestly that he may 

 be allowed " to behold again his father and mother" ; that " Varuna, uii- 

 disdainful, may bestow a thought upon him" ; that " he may not take away 

 his existence" ; that " he may not make the petitioner an object of death" ; 

 that he " may loose the petitioner from the upper bonds, and untie the centre, 

 and the lower, so that he may live." One verse says " S'unahsepha, seized 

 and bound to the three-footed tree (the sacrificial post), has invoked the 

 son of Aditi ; may the regal Varuna, wise and irresistible, liberate him ; 

 may he let loose his bonds." (p. 63.) These quotations afford a strong 

 presumptive evidence that S'unahsepha was intended for a sacrifice ; though 

 there be no positive mention of the fact in the Sahhita, and the hymns 

 contain many prayers for wealth, cattle, and other blessings, which any person 

 may ask without being in the position of a victim at a cruel sacrifice, 



* Wilson's Big Veda, I, pp. 59 f. 



