

90 Rajendralala Mitra — On Human Sacrifices in Ancient India. [No. I 



The Aitareya Brahmana of the Rig Veda gives the details of the story 

 which connects these hymns with a human sacrifice. The story has been 

 quoted at length by Wilson, in his paper " On the sacrifice of Human Beings 

 as an Element of the Ancient Religion of India"* and by Max Miiller 

 in his " Ancient Sanskrit Literature" (pp. 408 ff.) ; who has also printed 

 the text, and pointed out the variations of the Sankhayana Sutra version 

 of it {ibid, p. 573) ; it likewise occurs in its place in Haug's translation of 

 the Aitareya Brahmana (pp. 460 ff.), I need not, therefore, reproduce it here. 

 Suffice it to say that according to it, one Harishchandra had made a vow to 

 immolate his first-born to Varuna, if that divinity would bless him with 

 children : a child was born named Bohita, and Varuna claimed it ; but the 

 father evaded fulfilling his promise, until Bohita, grown up to man's estate 

 ran away from home, when Varuna afflicted the father with dropsy ; at last 

 Rohita purchased one S'unahsepha from Ajigarta for a hundred head 

 of cattle, had him tied to a stake, and was about to have him immo- 

 lated in redemption of his father's vow to Varuna, when the victim, at the 

 suggestion of Visvamitra, recited the hymns, and was thereby released. 

 The story is, with some slight variations in minor details, reproduced in 

 the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, and the Bhagavata Purana. The Aitareya 

 Brahmana gives seriatim the initials of the several hymns as they were 

 supposed to have been recited, and as they occur in the Saiihita, but the 

 other works refer to them generally, without any specific quotation. 



It is unquestionable that the works in which the story is given, are of 

 ages long subsequent to the date of the Saiihita, and their evidence cannot 

 be accepted as conclusive. Arguing upon this datum and the absence of all 

 mention of a human sacrifice in the Saiihita, Rosen, Wilson and others are 

 of opinion that the hymns cannot be associated with a human sacrifice. Wil- 

 son explains that the "upper, middle, and lower bonds" referred to in the 

 hymns, and which Indian commentators accept to mean the thongs with 

 which the head, the waist, and the legs of the victim were tied to the sacri- 

 ficial post, have been used metaphorically to imply the bondage of sin ; but 

 he admits that the reference to the " three-footed tree," the sacrificial post, 

 " is consistent with the popular legend, "f He says nothing about the 

 seizure, referred to in the verse above quoted, but that too affords a strong 

 argument in favour of the interpretation adopted by the author of the 

 Aitareya Brahmana. We have also to bear in mind that, whatever their age, the 

 Brahmanas are the oldest exposition we possess, of the origin, scope and pur- 

 port of the hymns of the Sanhitas, dating as they do, according to European 

 orientalists, from five to ten centuries before the Christian era, and to reject 

 their interpretation in favour of conclusions drawn by persons of this century, 

 would be to reject proof in favour of conjecture ; and that conjecture 

 * Journal, R. As. Soc, XIII, pp. 96 ff f Big Veda, I, p, 63. 



MB 



