The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c27.s6.12

v1.c27.s6.12

These different uses of the fire suggest the process by which the practice of sacrifice among the Iranians came to be changed in the Vedic period. The evidence of Herodotos ² we have no ground to doubt, and he is quite clear that the Persians used no fire: the victim was cut up, and the flesh laid down on grass, the Magos recited over it what he calls a Theogony, and after a short time the sacrificer took away the flesh and did what he liked with it. The grass on which the victim is laid is beyond possibility of doubt the strew, Barhis, of India: the Avestan name Baresman is undoubtedly cognate, though differently formed, and the Avesta used of it the expression *fra-star*, 'spread out', which is the Vedic *stṛ*. But in the Avesta, for reasons which we do not know, the strew became a bundle of grass tied together, which is used for various purposes.³ In the Rigveda the strew is clearly often still thought of as the place to which the gods come to receive the offerings,⁴ but the fire has its essential place within the altar, ready for the burning of the offerings. Hence we meet that constant confusion noted already in the conceptions of the functions of Agni: he is bidden on the one hand to carry the offerings to the god: in the other he is to invite them to come and to sit down on the strew to partake of the offerings: the two ideas are actually found in the same hymn.¹ The character of the strew is seen also in the rule that the gifts to the gods are first deposited on it, and that anything which falls upon it is not counted as wasted² and so unfit for offering. The exact form of the process of development by which the fire came to be treated as the normal mode of the offering to the deity is uncertain: the making of a sweet odour may have been adopted, even when the gods were still supposed to come to the strew, in order perhaps to call their attention to the performance of the offering, and to attract them there; the strew and perhaps even the remains of the offering were burnt as too full of holy power to be safe to keep, or sometimes even in the case of the offerings to eat; the fire has a strong power to drive off demons, or the fire was the actual god to whom the offering was made, all reasons from which the new use could arise. But it must be remembered that it never became the sole manner of offering:³ the throwing of gifts to water deities in the waters is a natural and common use; the placing of food in pits for the dead is a very old and common usage; the offerings to Rudra and other demoniac figures may be placed in ant-heaps, a sort of natural entrance to the earth, or hung on trees, or even merely thrown in the air.⁴