The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c27.s4.70

v1.c27.s4.70

Brilliant as is the presentation of this theory, it is difficult not to feel that it is open to the same objection as must be taken to the theory of religion presented by Durkheim² in his exposition of totemism as the earliest stage of religion. Religion with him also is essentially a social fact: the totem is the material object in which the conception of the unity of the primitive social group materializes itself. In both theories we have a tendency to find in primitive religion conceptions of too great elaboration and difficulty. Durkheim himself, however, does not abandon the gift theory in practice: he regards the gift as essential: the gods created by the collective mind of the group are the protectors and guardians of the group, but at the same time they require the gifts of the individuals to secure their existence and power. It is clear that much of Hubert and Mauss’s theory is borne out by facts, and the doctrine that in the sacrifice the victim becomes peculiarly holy is valuable and correct, accounting naturally as it does for many peculiarities of the sacrifice, and affording in all probability the best explanation of the origin and development of the doctrine of slaying a god. But the view that the sacrifice is primarily an offering to please the god seems to be borne out by every probability, and by the undoubted fact that the sacrifice was normally so understood throughout antiquity. In this regard it is impossible not to feel that the authors have allowed themselves to be influenced unduly by the theories of the Brāhmaṇas as to the nature of sacrifice, and have underestimated the purely speculative and learned character of these suggestions. The objection to the gift theory insisted upon by Jevons¹ which represents it as unworthy of the relation of god and man is open to the criticism that it sets too high a standard for the beginning of religion. Moreover, the gift theory of sacrifice has the advantage that it affords in conjunction with other simple conceptions a perfectly natural origin for the various forms of offering: the sacramental rite in its simplest form of eating with the god follows naturally from the primitive conception that a sharing the same food confers similarity of nature, assisted perhaps, as Jevons holds, by the joyous feast celebrated by the worshippers at the moment when they feel that by their offering they have deprecated the wrath of the god and secured his loving-kindness to themselves and their families. From this form of the sacramental meal, coupled with the principle of sanctity of the offering at the sacrifice, is easily deduced the view that the victim which is being offered is the god himself embodied for the time being in the victim: Jevons himself explains in a somewhat analogous way the conception of eating the god which found a place in the Mexican worship. But it would doubtless be a mistake to assume that the idea of the death of the god was always produced in this way only: we must take into account the life and death of nature and the harvest rites in which the spirit of the corn is assumed to die in the cutting of the corn, and to revive in the growth of the young corn in the spring, and in which the spirit of the corn, when the harvest is reaped, though outworn, is deemed to seek to avoid its doom by passing into some animal, bird, or man, and is killed in order that it may revive afresh in the spring. But this conception is not developed in Vedic ritual so far as it is recorded, nor has it any necessary connexion with sacrifice: moreover, it is at least probable that in many cases there has been confusion between the killing of evil spirits, wizards supposed to endanger the crop, and the slaying of corn spirits proper.¹ In Vedic religion at any rate the conception of grain as containing a spirit is hardly to be found: the one piece of evidence from the ceremony of the Varuṇapraghāsas² adduced by Hubert and Mauss³ is far from being convincing.