The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c28.s1.16

v1.c28.s1.16

A very different theory of the whole rite is suggested by Hillebrandt,⁴ who relies on the derivation of the word from *dah*, 'burn', in place of that from *daç*, 'serve a god', or perhaps *dakṣ*—preferred by Oldenberg. He therefore thinks that the Dīkṣā was a voluntary death by fire, the desire to burn oneself to attain the heaven of Viṣṇu, and adverts to the suicide by fire of Kalanos of Takṣaçīlā, which is recorded by the Greek writers. He admits, of course, that this is not the purpose of the rite as known to us, in which the offerer had no intention at all of departing from life, but undertook the offering in the hope *inter alia* of prolonging his days, and multiplying his possessions in this world, but he points out that Brāhmaṇa texts⁵ lay down that the victim for Agni and Soma, which is offered after the Dīkṣā, is not to be eaten, and that it is a buying off of one's self, which he interprets to mean that the ceremony of offering this victim was ingeniously intended to redeem the man from death. The stammering speech of the consecrated man he explains in another way, from the offering of enemies to the gods, the stammering being the view taken of their strange and unintelligible speech. The evidence for this view is, however, clearly of the weakest kind: there is no trace of the practice of voluntary religious suicide in the age of the Vedas: the pessimism which leads to this suicide is not, in historic times, known in the Veda, and the idea that as later¹ captured enemies were sacrificed to the gods is without any evidence for the Vedic age. The sanctity of the victim to the two gods is much more probably to be explained by the excess of divinity embodied in it, in view of the greatness of the two gods to whom it is dedicated, both of whom must be deemed to appropriate it for their own, and it must be remembered that the explanation of the offering being a redemption is merely a priestly speculation, not finally held valid by the Taittirīya Saṁhitā.