The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c13.s2.19

v1.c13.s2.19

Animals, too, later at least, served as living fetishes: of this, the instances, though not numerous, are singularly clear. At the Sākamedhas sacrifice, in an offering to Indra a bull was invoked: when it bellowed the offering was made;⁷ the meaning is made plain beyond doubt not only by the fact that Indra is elsewhere called a bull, that in the Atharvaveda⁸ a bull is addressed with the words ‘Men call thee Indra’, and that Verethraghna, the Avestan parallel to Indra, has a bull form, but by the express assertion of the Brāhmaṇa⁹ that in the rite Indra is thus invoked to come to slay Vṛtra, and the bellowing of the bull establishes clearly the fact that the god has come with satisfaction to receive the offering proffered to him by the sacrificer. Another sacrifice, recorded for us only in the Gṛhya ritual, the Çūlagava, shows us water and food offered to a bull, a cow, and a calf, the two former of which are each placed in a hut: when they have touched the offerings, the latter are offered to Rudra, his consort, and the victorious one.¹