The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c27.s5.40

v1.c27.s5.40

The Brahman Ajīgarta fares very hardly at the hands of the narrator, and one motive in it is clearly the connexion of Çunaḥçepa with the family of Viçvāmitra. The most that can be deduced from it in favour of human sacrifice is that it is possibly a far-off and dim reminiscence of a possible offering of the son of a king in time of distress as a sin offering. Obviously such a story allows us to see in it other explanations, for instance that it is an echo of the slaying of the divine king or of his son in him—if so, a very distant and distorted echo, or that it is due to totemism. In view, however, of the lack of better evidence of any kind for totemism or slaying the divine king,¹ the piacular explanation may stand, if it is realized that the tradition is clearly so distorted that we do not know what it means. The conclusion is an important one: in later India there are not a few traces of human sacrifice, and offerings to Kālī have taken place within recent years: the aborigines had clearly no hesitation in following certain forms of worship which involved human sacrifice,² but the Brahmans remained, like the Roman priests, superior to this particularly unlovable peculiarity of the human mind.