The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c27.s4.5

v1.c27.s4.5

Now in the conception of the sacramental communion there are clearly present two elements which need not necessarily be combined. It is possible for the communion to appear by itself alone: the worshippers are imagined to eat and with them the deity eats, so that the deity and his worshippers have thus a common bond in the food which they consume: of this the Homeric sacrifice³ clearly presents us with a good example, while another is given by the Latin festival on the Alban Mount.⁴ In the second place, however, there may be more than this: the victim may be in some way divine: the most developed idea will be found when the victim is imagined as actually being an embodiment of the god for the time being, but it may be that the victim is merely more or less affected by the divine spirit from the fact that the god comes to the place of offering, and therefore that the divine spirit affects the victim and the place of offering.⁵ Of the latter idea there is a clear hint in the Homeric ritual of sacrifice of an animal victim: the barley seems to have been laid on the altar, and then brought into contact with the victim to convey to the victim the divine spirit present in the altar, and this idea is confirmed by later evidence, such as the sacrifice at Athens known as the Bouphonia,⁶ and apparently the same idea is to be seen in the sprinkling of the *mola salsa* on the head of the victim in the Roman ritual and of melted butter in the Vedic rite.