The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c19.s6.36

c19.s6.36

26. Insofar as sacrifice still involved the death of the victim, the actual killing was removed from the place of sacrifice, the victims being immolated in a separate shed outside the ritual enclosure. Even so, from the point of view of the classical ritual, it could only be viewed as an embarrassing breach, that is, an "error." Hence the connections between violent death in sacrifice and the concept of the ritual error (see my article "Vrātya and Sacrifice," *Indo-Iranian Journal* 6 (1962): 22–24).