1876.] Eajendralala Mitra— On Human Sacrifices in Ancient India. 91 



founded in many instances upon very contracted and narrow views of modern 

 canons of criticism, of laws of unity and propriety, of consistency and habits 

 and modes of thinking, which are not always applicable to those records. 



It may be noted also that the conclusion drawn by the learned orienta- 

 lists from the above facts is, that the sacrifice of human beings did not form 

 an element of the ancient religion of India, and this is not warranted by the 

 premises. Doubtless the details of a sacrifice are not given in the Sanhita, 

 but, taking the Sanhita to be, as it unquestionably is, only a collection of 

 hymns divested of all connecting links, we have no right to expect them 

 there. It would be as reasonable to expect all the details of a story in a 

 hymn improvised by the hero of it, to meet a particular contingency, as to 

 expect the whole plot of a novel from a single speech in it. The absence of 

 reference to any rite, custom, or observance, in a book of hymns, however 

 sacred that book may be, is no proof of that rite, custom, or observance 

 having never existed among those who held the said hymns to be sacred. 

 To accept it as such, is to attach an importance to negative evidence to 

 which it has no claim, and in the case under notice there is enough, as shown 

 above, to warrant an opposite conclusion. 



Besides, "the ancient religion of India", referred to by the learned 

 Professors Wilson and Rosen, can mean either the religion of the 

 aborigines, or that of the Indo-Aryans, and as in the case of the former 

 no reference would be required to the Vedas, it is to be presumed that the 

 early religion of the Indo-Aryans is referred to ; and if so, we cannot 

 look to the Sanhita apart from the Brahmanas. What we call ancient 

 Hinduism is founded on the Brahmanas, and cannot possibly be dis- 

 sociated from it. We can easily conceive that the religion of the Aryans 

 before they had finally settled in India differed from it in many respects, 

 and we can found conjectures about it on certain slender facts to be gleaned 

 from the Sanhita of the Rig Veda and the Zendavesta ; but we cannot, without 

 misleading, call that religion, whatever it was, " the religion of ancient 

 India." The Brahmanas may have, for aught we know to the contrary, 

 changed the ancient rites, and introduced new ones ; and it is unquestionable 

 that many of their legends and anecdotes were got up merely by way of 

 illustrations, and have no claim to be believed as true, (the professors of the 

 Mimahsa school stigmatize them often as artliavdda or eulogistic) but we 

 cannot discard them, and replace their testimony by conjecture. 



At any rate the story of S'unahsepha must be accepted as a positive 

 proof in favour of the theory that at the time of the Aitareya Brahmana, the 

 Hindus did tolerate human sacrifice. To assume that the sacrifice referred 

 to in it was a symbolical one in which there was no intention whatever 

 to make a sanguinary offering, would be totally to destroy the raison d'etre 

 of the legend, to divest it of all its sensational elements, and to make it 



