The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c27.s5.23

v1.c27.s5.23

The victim has to be killed, so that it shall make no sound and so that there shall be no effusion of blood: it seems to have been usually strangled: the cruel method of killing recorded by Haug is not shown to have existed at any early period.¹¹ Stress is laid in the verse addressed to it on the fact that it is not really being killed. The omentum of the victim, a part rich in fat, is then extracted and offered up: thereafter the remaining parts are divided for offering, a rice cake is offered, portions of the remainder of the flesh are offered to the gods with formulae recalling the fact that the omentum has already been used, and the priest and other Brahmans eat the rest, keeping only the tail for the final part of the rite. The same division of the ceremony is observed in the animal offerings to the Fathers made at the Aṣṭakā offering, and the distinction must be very old.¹² The separate treatment of the omentum is proved for the Iranians by Strabo,¹ who explains that the soul only of the victim was given to the gods, except that a small piece of the omentum was put in the fire, and a corresponding distinction is to be found in the directions of Leviticus² regarding the sin and other offerings. It certainly seems to have been an early idea that the burning of the omentum made a sweet smell for the god: the Zulus burn it while leaving the rest of the victim untouched, believing that the spirits come and partake of it without leaving any trace of their feast. In this may be seen some evidence of the process of the transfer of the use of fire to its later employment as the normal way of conveying the offering to the gods.³ The blood, as we have seen, was left for the Rakṣases,⁴ along with the excrements, &c., of the victim, with which may be compared the practice of offering to the same powers oddments of the offerings of grain-stuffs, perhaps merely to deprecate their interference by this cheap form of sacrifice; but it is possible, as we have seen, that the offering to the Rakṣases must be taken seriously as an offering to chthonian powers of the earth, as is suggested by the fact that the snakes are often conceived as receiving blood.