1876.] Bajendralala Mitra— On Human Sacrifices in Ancient India. 95 



several such ; but a technical one, implying a specific ceremony to be per- 

 formed in the spring season, according to certain fixed and well defined 

 rules, which, according to the Puranas was altogether prohibited in the 

 present iron age, and has no relation whatever to the sacrifice of children in 

 redemption of vows. Whether the latter was ever prohibited or not, I 

 cannot state positively ; but that the sacrifice of S'unahsepha to the water- 

 god Varuna was the type on which the offering of infants to the water- 

 goddess Ganga at the confluence of the river of that name with the sea, the 

 emblem of the water-god Varuna, I have no reason to doubt ; and the 

 latter was duly and pretty extensively observed for centuries, until finally 

 put down by the British Government at the beginning of this century. 

 It should be added here that the offering did not invariably or even generally 

 lead to a murder, for a priest or bystander generally took up the child from 

 the water, and brought him up as a foster son, very much in the same 

 way as Visvamitra did in the case of S'unahsepha. 



The Purusha-medha was celebrated for the attainment of supremacy 

 over all created beings. Its performance was limited to Brahmans and 

 . Kshatriyas. It could be commenced only on the tenth of the waxing moon in 

 the month of Chaitra, and altogether it required forty days for its perform- 

 ance, though only five out of the forty days were specially called the days 

 of the Purusha-medha, whence it got the name of Panchdha. Eleven 

 sacrificial posts were required for it, and to each of them was tied an 

 animal fit for Agni and Soma, (a barren cow) the human victims being 

 placed between the posts. 



The earliest indication of this rite occurs in the Vajasaneyi Sanhita of 

 the "White Yajur Yeda. The passage in it bearing on the subject is supposed 

 to describe the different kinds of human victims appropriate for particular 

 gods and goddesses. The section, in which it occurs, opens with three verses 

 which, the commentator says, were intended to serve as mantras for offerings 

 of human victims. Then follows a series of one hundred and seventy-nine 

 names of gods in the dative case, each followed by the name of one or more 

 persons in the objective case ; thus " to Brahma a Brahmana, to Kshatra a 

 Kshatriya," &c. The copula is nowhere given, and it is quite optional 

 with the reader to supply whatever verb he chooses. The whole of these 

 names has been reproduced in the Taittiriya Brahmana of the Black Yajur 

 Yeda, with only a few slight variations, and in some cases having the verb 

 dlabhate after them. This verb is formed of the root labli "to kill" with 

 the prefix a, and commentators have generally accepted the term to mean 

 slaughter, though in some cases it means consecration before slaughter. The 

 century of Brahmanas of the White Yajur Yeda also accepts the passage to 

 be descriptive of human victims, and under the circumstance we may un- 

 hesitatingly take it in that sense, though the arguments by which the hymns 



