The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c27.s4.67

v1.c27.s4.67

Another aspect of sacrifice which has some affinity to a spell and a sacrament is that emphasized by Hubert and Mauss⁶ in their theory of the nature of sacrifice, based on the evidence in the main of the Old Testament and the Vedic ritual. Their attention has been attracted by the fact that a sacrifice produces a definite effect in the performer and the means which he employs: he is filled with a sacred spirit as is the victim which he offers, a fact of which we have already seen instances, and which cannot be for a moment called in question. The Dīkṣā or preliminary consecration, and the concluding bath, which provides a means of removing from man in some degree the excessive sanctity with which he has become endued in the process of offering, are significant proofs of this aspect of sacrifice. The sacrifice, many as are the uses which can be made of it, has an essential unity in that it aims at the establishment of communication between the sacred and the profane world by means of a victim, that is, a thing which is destroyed in the course of the ceremony. As opposed to Robertson Smith, the authors lay stress on the fact that the victim acquires its sacred character in the rite, and does not possess it normally *ab extra*, a fact which makes it well adapted for the accomplishment of the most varied ends: the current which runs through it can pass to the sky from the earth or *vice versa* equally well. The motive of this desire to enter into relations with the powers above is simple enough: man sees in them the source of life, and is anxious to attain as close contact with them as possible. But immediate contact would be fatal, and would unfit man for secular life, as is indeed the case with priests of too great sanctity like the unfortunate Flamen Dialis¹ or the Emperor of Japan: therefore he interposes an intermediary, who at the same time serves as a substitute for the sacrificer himself. This victim must be dispatched to the other world: its soul is liberated by death, with its own permission, for it becomes by the sacrifice a powerful being which no man would seek to irritate, and its body thereafter may be destroyed, whether by being consumed entirely by fire as in the Hebrew holocaust, or by being eaten by the priest or the worshippers, or again its skin or other portion may merely be brought into close contact with the worshipper. Incidentally the sacrifice accomplishes much more than its mere immediate aim: if the victim offered by the consecrated man serves to secure him his close relationship with the gods, it also sends the spirit of the victim to strengthen and multiply the species. All sacrifice is essentially social: it involves negation by the individual, but it strengthens the divine which is the ideal representative of the social unit, and thus indirectly benefits the individual himself. A further development of sacrifice in its ideal form is the conception of the sacrifice of the god himself, when the intermediary disappears *in toto*.