The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c27.s4.34

v1.c27.s4.34

On the other hand, when the deities to whom the offerings are made are terrible, it is clearly natural that the offering should be regarded as not suitable for human consumption: in Greece the offerings to the dead and the chthonian divinities were not normally eaten. So in India, when rice cakes are offered to the Fathers, the sacrificer refrains from eating them: he merely smells them:³ it is normally not right to partake of an offering to Rudra;⁴ if an offering is made for one who seeks thus to find death, at the consecration one should only smell, not taste:⁵ in another case, the Dhadhigharma, or offering of hot sour milk, the remains of the sacrifice may be eaten by priests who have undergone the consecration, but not by others who are less well fortified for the risk:⁶ it is the native explanation,⁷ and it is reasonable enough to hold that the mere smelling is a compromise between the necessity of partaking as normally and the danger of the action. The terrible character of the offering is further indicated by other usages: when an offering is made to the Rakṣases, to Rudra, to the Fathers, or the Asuras, or when an imprecation is made,⁸ the sacrificer should touch water. When an offering is made to the Fathers,⁹ in one case, the sacrificer looks north, whereas the quarter of the Fathers is the south; when he offers to Rudra, he looks south, for Rudra’s place is in the north, and the offerer is constantly bidden not to turn round after an offering to Rudra, which is explicable only by the view that the dread god is on the scene in bodily presence. We may here also include the theory, already mentioned, of some theologians that the victim to Agni and Soma at the Agniṣṭoma should not be eaten: it may have seemed to some that the presence of the gods Agni and Soma made the victim too dangerous to permit of close contact. But the general rule was that it should be eaten as is in one case expressly stated.