94 Kajendralala Mitra— On Human Sacrifices in Ancient India. [No. 1 



however, proves too much. If it is to be accepted as an evidence against 

 the existence of human sacrifice in the time of the Aitareya Brahmana it 

 must be allowed to tell equally against all animal sacrifices ; but curiously 

 enough, immediately after the story, the Brahmana supplies the necessary 

 mantras for offering the omentum ( Vapd) of a slaughtered animal • and, in five 

 hundred different places, it furnishes directions for selecting, offering, slaugh- 

 tering, and dividing among the officiating priests, goats, sheep, oxen, and 

 other animals. In short, all the principal rites of the Brahmana period re- 

 quired animal sacrifices, and it would be absurd to believe on the strength of 

 the story in question that in the time of the Aitareya Brahmana there was 

 no horse sacrifice, no cow sacrifice, no goat sacrifice, and everywhere rice 

 cakes were substituted for sanguinary offerings. It would be equally 

 absurd for the Puranas to prohibit the Purusha-medha and the horse sacrifice 

 in the Kaliyuga, if they had been already prohibited in the Vedas. The 

 fact, however, is, the story is simply eulogistic (arthavdda) and not at all 

 intended to be prohibitive. In the Brahmanas every rite, when being 

 enjoined, is the best of rites, as in the Puranas every sacred pool is the holiest 

 of the holy, and every god the greatest among gods ; and as the object of 

 the story was to praise the rice cake, it at once made it supersede all other 

 kinds of offering. The Mimansakas invariably adopt this style of explana- 

 tion to reconcile all contradictory passages in the Vedas, and it is, I think, 

 the only reasonable one that can be adopted in such cases. Jaimini dis- 

 tinctly lays down that " nothing is binding in the Vedas, which is not posi- 

 tively enjoined as a duty" (Ghodandlakshano'rtho dharmah), and devotes 

 a whole chapter (Book I, Chap. 2,) to what are mere arthavdda or eulogistic, 

 including all Vedic legends under that head. 



Colebrooke's opinion on the subject was founded upon a passage in the 

 Satapatha Brahmana of the White Yajur Veda, in which the human victims 

 at a Purushamedha are recommended to be let off after certain mantras 

 had been repeated over them ; but that passage cannot be accepted as a 

 proof in the case under notice. The word Purusha-medha, it is true, literally 

 means " a human sacrifice" ; but it is not a common term descriptive of 

 every rite in which a human victim is offered to the gods, for there were 



sists are the hairs of the animal, its husks the skin, its smallest particles the blood, all 

 the fine particles to which the (cleaned) rice is ground (for making, by kneading it with 

 water, a ball) represent the flesh (of the animal), and whatever other substantial part is 

 in the rice, are the bones (of the animal). He who offers the Purodasa, offers the sacri- 

 ficial substance of all animals (for the latter is contained in the rice of the Purodasa). 

 Thence they say : the performance of the Purodasa offering is to be attended to. 



" Now he recites the Yajya for the Vapa (which is about to be offered) Yuvam etani 

 divi, i. e., Ye, O Agni and Soma, have placed, by your joint labours, those lights on 

 the sky ! Ye Agni and Soma, have liberated the rivers which had been taken (by demons), 

 from imprecation and defilement." Haug's Translation, pp. 90 ff. 



