The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c32.s6.26

v2.c32.s6.26

The ordeal is nothing more than a form of divination in one of its aspects: the idea in it is not that the deity would actually punish an accused person so much as that it should by its treatment of him show whether or not he is innocent of the charge made against him. But the analogy of the ordeal to the oath in which the swearer invokes a penalty on himself, if he is telling untruth, shows that the separation of the ideas of punishment and discrimination cannot be assumed to have been present to the Vedic mind:¹⁰ the form of ordeals recorded for early Vedic times shows the prevalence of punishment at the same time as the test of fact: the Rigveda has not any certain example of the ordeal: the only Brāhmaṇa cases are those in which Vatsa asserts his purity of Brahmanical origin by walking through the fire without harm affecting him,¹ Triçoka's assertion of superior Vedic knowledge by a fire ordeal and the successful crossing of a stream, and the glowing axe which is brought up for the purpose of testing the accused thief.² The fire as a sentient power by failing to burn or by burning shows innocence or guilt: but it punishes at the same time, and this is roughly speaking true of some of even the later ordeals, such as the poison and water ordeals.³ A procedure to prevent the burning of the hand in the ordeal of plunging the hand into boiling oil to extract a piece of gold is prescribed in the Kauçika.⁴