The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c27.s5.30

v1.c27.s5.30

There is nothing here to interfere with the usual view that the sacrifice is essentially a gift offering, not a relic of totemism, or of the offering of a vegetation spirit or, earlier, of a spirit of animal life, in order to keep it ever young. No such explanation is at all requisite in order to explain the connexion of the gods with particular victims, nor to explain the silent death of the victim, from which the principal celebrants avert their heads, or the efforts to persuade it that it is not being killed, a device applied also to the tree which is being cut for the sacrificial post. The death of the victim is that of an animal with a soul which could be wroth, and also full of the divine spirit—sometimes so full, as in the case of the victim for Agni and Soma, that some would not eat of it—and it is a dreadful thing, therefore, to slay it, though necessary. Apart, however, from the place of offering, the animal is merely an ordinary animal, and therefore it is difficult to read into the sacrifice more than the theory of a gift, sometimes with magic qualities.⁵