The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c7.19

c7.19

The form of the system may have been saved, but the content continues to trouble the ritualist. Therefore the inverse solution is attempted: giving up the form and being free as to the content. The alternative is, then, to obtain the heads anyhow, either real ones or counterfeit ones of gold or clay, without performing an animal sacrifice.³⁸ But this alternative is again rejected in strong terms by the *Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa*; the real heads would not be ritually consecrated and the counterfeit ones would be false. No heads without sacrifice, and sacrifice means systematized standard sacrifice. Thus one has to fall back on the five sacrificial victims. *Śatapatha* 6. 2. 1. 39, however, states that this fivefold sacrifice was only the old way, and even goes so far in its historical concern as to mention the last sacrificer to perform it, Śyāparṇa Sāyakāyana, although we may doubt whether he really performed the sacrifice in its systematized form.³⁹ The text goes on to explain that nowadays only one animal is sacrificed, either a he-goat for Prajāpati or one for Vāyu Niyutvat. The head is apparently not severed, and the purity of the systematized animal sacrifice is saved. But this leaves open the problem of the heads which cannot be obtained ritually. Whichever way one turns, one ends in a stalemate, and *Śatapatha* 6. 2. 2. 15 can only state the three alternatives—"Whichever way may suit him, either those five animals, or the he-goat for Prajāpati, or the one for Vāyu Niyutvat (let him perform that)"—leaving the solution of the intractible problem to the inventiveness of the sacrificer and his officiants.