The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c28.s2.6

v1.c28.s2.6

The nature of the bath is further elucidated by the fact that through the performance of ablutions in it the waters become charged with magic potency and power: thus at the end of the bath at the horse sacrifice, those who go in, though evil doers, are released from all their sins.¹ The bath too serves as the mode of driving out evil in a curious rite, which is recorded of the same sacrifice:² a man is driven into the water up to his mouth, and on his head offerings are made to Jumbaka, to death, and to the slaying of an embryo: the man is of an ugly appearance, and is said in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa to be the symbol of Varuṇa. It is clear from the notice of a Sūtra that the real meaning of the ceremony, which ends with the man being driven away, is that he is a scapegoat, who bears with him the sins of the community, but who is also purified from them in some measure by the driving into the water. The offering on his head may well be derived from the mere mode of transferring³ the sin by touching him on such a part as the head, or merely be based on the fact that an offering to Varuṇa was an essential part of the rite for the priest, and that the obvious place to make it was in the man who had the sins of the people upon him. That a human sacrifice is meant, as was imagined by Weber,⁴ who thought that the potency of the bath to remit sin was due to this, is obviously wrong: there is no trace in any of the texts of the death of the man, who is on the contrary clearly driven away⁵ as an essential part of the rite.