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The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c39.s3: § 3. The Theory of the Sacrifice

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c39.s3

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English

§ 3. The Theory of the Sacrifice

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Amid an infinity of varied details the Brāhmaṇas present a perfectly definite body of opinion as to the fundamental nature of the sacrifice,⁷ and in connexion with the sacrifice of the gods, the Asuras, the seers, and men. This theory is the most characteristic and independent part of the Brāhmaṇas: in the speculations as to the unity of the universe and the god in whom that unity finds expression, the Brāhmaṇas are only inheritors of the speculation of the Rigveda, but in the doctrine of the sacrifice they develop a theory which may have been held in germ at least in the age of the Rigveda, but which is not expressed there and which doubtless in considerable measure is a new creation. This is indicated by one fundamental fact: the sacrifice in the Brāhmaṇas is a piece of magic pure and simple: this is assuredly not the attitude of the average seer of the hymns of the Rigveda. The turning into magic of the sacrifice is, we have seen, a conception which is secondary: the existence of magic as early as the sacrifice is one thing: the converting of what was originally a sacrifice into magic is, like the art of black magic, a subsequent development.

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⁷ Practically all the evidence is collected in Lévi, *La doctrine du sacrifice dans les Brâhmaṇas*; the texts (e. g. KS.) not used by him add little of value. Cf. also Oldenberg, *Weltanschauung der Brāhmaṇatexte*, pp. 159-67.

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In this theory of the universe there is much that cannot be called in any normal sense philosophical, but taken as a whole it is impossible to deny the name of philosophy to an ordered view of the universe, fully thought out, and within its fundamental limitations logical and complete.

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The basis of the whole system is the identification of the sacrifice with Prajāpati, who is the creator *par excellence*. The exhaustion of Prajāpati on creation is the exhaustion of the sacrifice: the work of creation is carried out with the aid of the sacrifices of various kinds: the danger to which the creatures whom he creates are exposed from the jealousy of the gods has to be overcome by new sacrifices invented for them, for Agni, the Maruts, even for Varuṇa. As the sacrifice, Prajāpati is all creative, the gods and the Asuras arise from his upgoing and his descending breaths, from him are sprung men, the beasts, the plants and the trees, the minerals as well as the heaven and the earth and the mountains. But, while he is the all-father, still his nature as the sacrifice presents another relationship: he is father of Agni, but as the sacrifice Agni recomposes him and so is his father:¹ and similarly with the gods as a whole. Moreover he is the creator of the sacrifice as well as the sacrifice: he invents rite after rite to aid the gods in their struggles with the Asuras, and he was the first to invent the words used in the sacrifice and its varied forms. Moreover the sacrifice is not only Prajāpati, but, as he is the first to sacrifice, so he is the first victim to be offered.² He gave himself to the gods, and when he did so he created a counterpart of himself in the form of the sacrifice, and thus he redeemed his life from the gods. Yet again, as the first to sacrifice, he is the first to win the reward of sacrifice and to ascend to the sun.³

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¹ ÇB. vi. 1. 2. 26, 27.

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² PB. vii. 2. 1; ÇB. xi. 1. 8. 2–4. In RV. x. 121. 2 (*ātmadā*) this sense has been seen, but wrongly (cf. Lindenau, ZII. i. 46, n. 2). See also below, Appendix B.

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³ ÇB. x. 2. 2. 1.

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Prajāpati is not merely the creator of beings, but he reduces them to order from their confusion by entering them with form, Rūpa, and name, Nāman.⁴ The same feat is accorded to the Brahman by another text, and the form is identified with mind and the name with speech.⁵ These two figure in a contest for priority, the mind claiming that speech is but an imitation of it, while speech lays stress on the fact that it gives means of expression and communication. But Prajāpati decides, in favour of the mind, a struggle which is constantly taken up again in the Upaniṣads, and which has a famous parallel in the Roman legend of the contest of the members and the stomach.⁶ Speech, however, remains of value and aid to Prajāpati, and encourages him when he is in doubt or is wearied; he sends her forth to be revealed as the earth, atmosphere, and sky; she is his bride, to bear creation.¹ She forms, therefore, a ground of contest between the gods and the Asuras: the gods win her by inducing the sacrifice to make overtures to her:² again the gods obtain by the offer of her the Soma from the Gandharvas: she brings back the Soma, and the two sides seek to retain her: the Gandharvas recite the Veda, the gods dance and sing and win her foolish heart by these base means. Again she flies from them and enters the wood; but the gods find her and she curses the wood for delivering her up: the trees, however, distributed her in the drum, the lute, and other places.³ At another time she is wroth with the Aṅgirases who prefer Sūrya to her as a sacrificial fee, and leaves the gods, remaining in the space between them and the Asuras and becoming a lioness.⁴ She is, however, won over. The distinction of speech was accomplished by Indra in return for a fourth part of the Soma: one quarter only is distinct, the other parts are the speeches of the beasts, the birds, and insects.⁵ Among men the speech is best in the country of the Kuru-Pañcālas, and the Asuras and barbarians alike talk a bad speech.⁶

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⁴ TB. ii. 2. 7. 1.

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⁵ ÇB. xi. 2. 3. 1–6.

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⁶ TS. ii. 5. 11. 4; PB. vi. 4. 7; xi. 1. 3; MS. iv. 6. 4; ÇB. i. 4. 5. 8–11; BAU. vi. 3; CU. v. 1. 1; AU. ii. 4; PU. ii. 3; ÇA. ix; Lanman, *Hindu Pantheism*, pp. 18, 19.

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¹ PB. x. 2. 1; xx. 14. 2; KS. xii. 5. In the domestic ritual of the Çabalī rite she appears as a wish-cow; cf. Hopkins, TCA. xv. 27, n. 2.

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² ÇB. iii. 2. 1. 18–23.

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³ PB. vi. 5. 10; TS. vi. 1. 4. 1; MS. iii. 6. 8.

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⁴ ÇB. iii. 5. 1. 21.

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⁵ TS. vii. 4. 7. 3; MS. iv. 5. 8; ÇB. iv. 1. 3. 6.

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⁶ ÇB. iii. 2. 3. 15; 1. 23, 24; KB. vii. 6; Macdonell and Keith, *Vedic Index*, ii. 279. For speech as a divine gift to the singer, cf. AV. ii. 1. 4.

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To the other gods the sacrifice stands in a slightly different relation: Viṣṇu indeed is often identified with the sacrifice, but this idea, though important, and doubtless an expression of the high standing in the pantheon of that god, is not in all probability much more than a recognition of this importance. Viṣṇu plays no very great part in the theosophy proper. The gods are, like the Asuras, children of Prajāpati, but, though born of the nobler part of the god, are yet in physical strength weaker: they are, however, superior in science, and by their knowledge of the sacrifice they can defeat their rivals. They are essentially in the control of the sacrificer: the seers can even seize and hold them fast, for despite their possession of more than one body they can be present at only one rite at a time. Kutsa holds Indra by cords; Luça taunts the god who breaks free, but Kutsa with a new Sāman brings him back: a later version of the legend, however, allows of the division of the god into his person and his greatness.⁷ The sacrifice or the threefold knowledge, which is the essence of the sacrifice, is the essence of the gods. The gods are lovers of the recondite,⁸ compact of truth, but the truth is nothing but exactness in the rites and the formulae of the sacrifice. To the sacrifice they owe the glory and power which is theirs, and, what is far more important, their immortality,¹ which they gain by the sacrifice: they are ever represented as being in fear of death, or Yama, or the ender, the year, death, Prajāpati. Over the question of immortality they have desperate struggles with the Asuras, whom the Çatapatha often, and the Pañcaviñça once, make their elder brothers: in one case the gods were being steadily killed because Çuṣṇa, the Asura, had in his mouth the ambrosia, which Indra as an eagle stole from him, thus depriving his breath of the power to revive the smitten Asuras.² The struggle with the Asuras repeats itself in innumerable forms: in one case Indra metamorphizes himself into a female jackal, and runs thrice round, winning the earth:³ more famous is the use of Viṣṇu, the sacrifice, as a dwarf to accomplish the winning of the earth from the Asuras,⁴ or more directly the three citadels of the Asuras, of iron, silver, and gold in the three worlds, are overthrown by the performance of the Upasad ceremonies.⁵ The gods also by the use of the new- and full-moon sacrifices force the Asuras to abandon the half month of waning moon, which they had occupied.⁶

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⁷ PB. ix. 2. 22; JB. i. 228 in JAOS. xviii. 32; cf. PB. ix. 4. 14, &c.

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⁸ *parokṣakāma*, ÇB. vi. 1. 1. and often; in AB., TB., GB. as *parokṣapriya*. So Indra = Arjuna, ÇB. ii. 1. 2. 11.

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¹ TS. vii. 2. 4. 1; AV. ii. 1. 5; xiii. 1. 7; ÇB. xi. 2. 3. 6; x. 4. 3. 3–8; MS. ii. 2. 2; iii. 4. 7; PB. xxiv. 19. 2, and often. That they, being born, will pass away, is recognized only later (cf. Maitr. i. 4).

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² KS. xxxvii. 14.

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³ TS. vi. 2. 4. 3, 4; MS. iii. 8. 3.

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⁴ MS. iii. 8. 3; ÇB. i. 2. 5. 1–7.

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⁵ TS. vi. 2. 3. 1; MS. iii. 8. 1; ÇB. iii. 4. 4, 3–5; KB. viii. 8, &c.

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⁶ ÇB. i. 7. 2. 22–4; TB. i. 5. 6. 3, 4.

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In the struggle the sacrifice plays a constant part: the gods are often aided by advice from Prajāpati, and they apply themselves to severe penances to bring about victory, but the decisive thing in their favour is their knowledge of the correct mode of offering: the Asuras put the bricks in the fire altar with the mark below,⁷ in the preliminary rites they shave first the hair, then the beard, then the arm-pits;⁸ they offer a white victim born of a black mother,⁹ and these errors are fatal. They try magic but without success. The gods on their part cajole the chaplains of the demons, Çanḍa, Marka, and Uçanas, and are willing to break faith for victory: they detach the Rakṣases from the Asuras by promise of equal shares of the spoil, and they refuse them any share at all.¹⁰ They defeat the Asuras by the inability of the latter to find a feminine for the word five,¹¹ but more often they have to fight hard battles. One story shows the Asuras seeking to build a fire altar to reach the heaven: Indra disguises himself, is allowed to put on a brick, and, when it is all but finished, he drags it away with the result that the altar falls.¹² Even, however, within the divine family there are disagreements: the ancient Sādhya gods seem to have vanished from importance,¹³ but the Ādityas and the Aṅgirases are bitter rivals. Here, again, however, the value of knowledge of the sacrifice is the most important thing of all, and the Ādityas are superior by far in this and reach heaven before the Aṅgirases, who have to serve them in place of being served by them. The same defective knowledge in the Aṅgirases leads them to require teaching from Nābhānediṣṭha, for which they have to pay dearly, and drives them to compromises with the Fathers.¹

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⁷ MS. iii. 2. 7.

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⁸ TB. i. 5. 6. 1.

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⁹ MS. ii. 5. 9.

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¹⁰ TS. vi. 4. 10. 1; PB. vii. 5. 20; TS. ii. 4. 1. 1; TB. i. 8. 3. 3.

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¹¹ ÇB. i. 5. 4. 6–11.

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¹² TB. i. 1. 2. 4–6; MS. i. 6. 9; KS. viii. 1; ÇB. ii. 1. 2. 13–17.

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¹³ They (like the demons; TS. vi. 2. 5. 3 f.) had two libations only, PB. viii. 3. 6; 4. 9; xxv. 8. 2.

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¹ TB. ii. 1. 1. 1.

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The sacrifice is, however, the source of disagreement among the gods; the advantages of it are far too great to allow of the gods being content to share equally, and we hear that Viṣṇu, recognized as the first of the gods by reason of his sacrificial skill, makes himself hated for his pride, and the gods induce the ants to gnaw through his bowstring, so that his head is carried away.² Even when, at a session in Kurukṣetra, it had been agreed to share the glory of the sacrifice, when it is attained by Soma,³ he appropriates it, and Indra readily destroys Namuci, when he finds that he can do so by stretching the words of his oath. The several residences of the gods is exclusive; they do not visit one another. They race one another for shares in the offering, and Indra and Vāyu bear off the first places.

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² MS. iv. 5. 9; ÇB. xiv. 1. 1. 1–10; PB. vii. 5. 6.

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³ MS. ii. 1. 4.

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The danger from the Asuras drives the gods to close union; they find that they must have mutual confidence, and they make a pact depositing their bodies with Varuṇa, on the understanding that he who violates it shall not be reunited with his forms.⁴ They are further compelled to resort to monarchy: they chose Varuṇa, Agni, or Soma, as king, but finally they perform the great consecration of Indra: the All-gods serve as heralds, the water of consecration is poured on by Prajāpati, the Vasus assist at the east, the Rudras in the south, the Ādityas at the west, the All-gods at the north, the Sādhyas and Āptyas in the centre, the Maruts and the Aṅgirases at the zenith.⁵

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⁴ TS. vi. 2. 2. 1, 2; MS. iii. 7. 10; ÇB. iii. 4. 2. 4, 5, &c.

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⁵ AB. viii. 12.

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Despite the relations of the gods with the sacrifice, the sacrifice is by no means always loyal to them: it flees from them, taking now the form of Viṣṇu, now that of a Suparṇa bird, now that of a horse, or of a black antelope. Nor have the gods ever learned the whole art of sacrifice, even as men have not had it revealed to them: they pick up fragments of it from time to time. They may even have to seek knowledge from the Ṛṣis such as the snake seer, Arbuda Kādraveya.

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The place of the seers is in view of their relation to the sacrifice one of great importance: they are the means by which in the normal case men secure the essential knowledge of the ritual, and they are often indebted to the gods for it; Nodhas is taught a Sāman by them in reward for his learning. They even declare that Çiçu Āṅgirasa was entitled to call the Fathers ‘my children’ owing to his knowledge of the ritual, as in the Atharvaveda the seer may by insight win the position of father of his father. The Vaikhānusas, the seers, whom Rahasyu Devamalimluc slew at Munimaraṇa, were revived by Indra, and the same god revived Upagu Sauçravasa, whom his royal master Kutsa had killed for persisting in the worship of Indra.¹ Atri, on his part, saves the sun from the grip of the Asura Svarbhānu, the darkness disappearing as a succession of variously coloured sheep,² and Bharadvāja warns the gods of the presence of the Asuras in the Ukthas, and so saves them.³ Vasiṣṭha constrains the god Indra to show himself to him in bodily presence, and Indra must agree.⁴ Even if the gods seek to keep, as they sometimes do, knowledge from the seers, the latter triumph: they recognize that the gods have put the sacrificial post in upside down, and they find the Nigadas and Praiṣas, which they had at first omitted. The seer also can rely on the gods to enable him to convince men of his seerhood: Kavaṣa Ailūṣa, despised by other priests, is shown to be a seer by the conduct of the Sarasvatī, which pays him reverence by flowing round him:⁵ Vatsa walks triumphant through the fire, when his claim is disputed by Medhātithi.⁶

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¹ PB. xiv. 4. 7; 6. 8.

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² PB. vi. 6. 8; Hopkins, TCA. xv. 35; the gods by noises (PB. iv. 5. 2) accomplish the feat.

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³ AB. iii. 49.

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⁴ TS. iii. 5. 2; KS. xxxvii. 17; PB. xv. 5. 24.

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⁵ AB. ii. 19; KB. xii. 3.

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⁶ PB. xiv. 6. 6; cf. the later text, JB. iii. 233–5.

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The mode of transmission of the knowledge of the rites explains why the ceremonial can be altered in important detail: the tradition is not established, and the theologians can discuss details even with royal personages, such as Janaka and Açvapati Kaikeya. We are actually told of points on which the great Yājñavalkya held opinions differing from the normal, but which he did not carry into effect.⁷

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⁷ ÇB. iv. 2. 1. 7. See also below, § 5.

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In its aspect towards men the sacrifice is identical with the sacrificer, and it is identical also with the gods and with Prajāpati. The sacrifice is essentially commensurate with men, and the conclusion is not doubtfully drawn that the sacrifice should be the sacrifice of man himself:⁸ he owes debts, to the Fathers to produce a son, to the seers to recite the sacred texts, to men in the shape of hospitality, and to the gods he owes himself, just as Prajāpati offered up himself. The conclusion would, therefore, appear to be that the perfect form of sacrifice should be suicide, but such an idea is not mentioned in the text of the Brāhmaṇas, whether or not it existed then,⁹ as it in a sense certainly did in the Buddhist and Jain period. The idea, however, in its less developed form is expressed in various ways: the sap which is the essence of sacrifice is first in man, then it passes on to the other victims, the horse, the ox, the sheep, the goat, and even into the rice, which is thus not in itself worthy of sacrifice, but is still full of the sap of sacrifice.¹⁰ Again the consecration gives man a new and divine life, but it also means the handing over of his old body to the gods as an offering: this offering is not, however, performed: it is redeemed by the offering to the victim to Agni and Soma, which follows, and of that victim one view is that the man should not eat, since it is a redemption of his own body.¹ The human sacrifice is also permitted, not as suicide, but as a substitute for oneself, but this is a doctrine which has no direct support in the Brāhmaṇas, and may be a very late conception. The offering of man in the rite of the piling of the fire altar is recorded, but the sense of the redemption of the self is not there pressed, though it receives a classical form in the legend of Çunaḥçepa, who is to serve as a substitute for the offering of the king's son. Here, however, the motive of sacrifice is an ordinary case of the vow of some precious object to a god.

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⁸ ÇB. xi. 1. 8. 2–5; iii. 6. 2. 16; i. 7. 2. 1–6.

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⁹ Lévi, *La doctrine du sacrifice*, p. 133.

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¹⁰ MS. iii. 10. 2; ÇB. i. 2. 3. 6; vi. 2. 2. 15; AB. ii. 8.

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¹ TS. vi. 1. 11. 6; AB. ii. 9; KB. x. 3; ÇB. iii. 3. 4. 21; xi. 7. 1. 3.

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At the same time the sacrifice involves the death of the god in the form of the Soma² or the victim. In the former case every effort is made to conceal the fact of death from the god: he is assured that he is being pounded, not for the sake of his death, but to attain the overlordship of the metres: or again one thinks, as one takes up the pressing stone, of one's enemy, and thus kills him and not the innocent Soma.³ The seller of the Soma is treated with insult and blows as an evil man, and the Soma himself is accorded the guest reception, as he moves to his death in the ritual. These remarks, however, show clearly enough no serious or real feeling for the death of the god: they are products of speculation, not of deep religious conviction.

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² TS. vi. 6. 7. 1; MS. iv. 7. 2; ÇB. iii. 9. 4. 2; iv. 3. 4. 1; AB. iii. 32. 2.

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³ ÇB. iii. 3. 2. 6; 9. 4. 17; cf. ii. 2. 2. 1; GB. ii. 3. 9.

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The sacrifice itself is supposed to undergo a perpetual series of deaths, and of coming again to life: in the etymology of the Brāhmaṇas it is born through movement, hence it is *yañ-ja*, which is as much as *yajña*.⁴ The sacrifice is the eater, for it lives on all creatures,⁵ but at the same time it is the universal principle of life.⁶ The libation offered in the fire is the life of the gods: the eating of the oblation by the priests is the life of men: the placing of the Nārāçaṅsa cups on the oblation holders is the life of the Fathers. Aforetime, indeed, the gods and the men and the Fathers used to enjoy the sacrifice together, and still they do so, but the difference is that the gods and the Fathers are no longer seen by the mortal eyes.⁷ The gods depend essentially on the sacrifice: Indra is hungry, and goes and asks for a gift: courtesy is due to them, and, therefore, when they are on the next day to receive the sacrifice, men do not eat but fast, since it would be discourteous to anticipate the feeding of the guests, who have been invited. The gods are so anxious for the offering that they consider eagerly whether they are to receive the sacrifice, or if it is to go to others. They know beforehand the intention of man, for he resolves with his mind, thence the knowledge goes to the breath, thence to the wind, and the wind wafts to the gods the news of the intention.⁸

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⁴ ÇB. iii. 9. 4. 23.

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⁵ ÇB. ix. 4. 1. 11.

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⁶ ÇB. xiv. 3. 2. 1; iii. 6. 2. 25.

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⁷ ÇB. iii. 6. 2. 26.

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⁸ ÇB. iii. 4. 2. 6, 7. The first comer wins Indra, who has favourites, PB. ix. 4. 10 f.

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The gods, despite their close relations to men,⁹ and their interest in the sacrifice, regard men with some degree of dislike and suspicion : there was even a time when men and gods lived together, but the gods were wearied and disgusted with the demands of men, who used always to ask them for what they wanted *sans phrase*,¹ and therefore departed from the earth. It is the gods who have given men the evils of sleep, sluggishness, anger, hunger, love of dice and of women.² The Ṛbhus, admitted indeed into the society of the gods, are disliked because of their human odour.³ Many are the devices adopted by the gods to prevent men following them into their immortality : they succeed in so far that an agreement with the god of death secures that men shall not attain immortality with their bodies.⁴ On the other hand men ever strive to imitate the gods and adopt in the sacrifice the habits of the gods, that especially of preferring the right side for the commencement of all rites as opposed to the left, which men are said to favour : the differences are of absurd detail.⁵

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⁹ The Brahmans are the gods who do not eat oblations, MS. i. 4. 6; GB. ii. 1. 6.

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¹ ÇB. ii. 3. 4. 4.

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² JB. i. 98; *cf.* ii. 363.

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³ AB. iii. 30. 4.

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⁴ ÇB. x. 4. 3. 9. Ascent to heaven with a body is admitted, PB. xxi. 4. 3.

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⁵ ÇB. i. 2. 2. 9; 7. 2. 9; iii. 2. 2. 16; vii. 2. 2. 6; iii. 1. 2. 4, 5; 3. 14; TS. vi. 1. 1. 5; MS. iii. 6. 3, &c.

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The aim of the sacrifice is the world of heaven : the sacrifice is the ship which bears the sacrificer to that world, and the Bṛhat and Rathantara Sāmans are the two rudders of the ship, which bears the sacrificer to the desired bourne. From another point of view the sacrificer mounts to the heaven : he does this by the special mode of recitation adopted : first he performs the text prescribed, pausing at each quarter verse, thus attaining this world; then by half verses, attaining the atmosphere; then by three-quarter verses, attaining the heaven; and then he says the whole verse, thus winning firmly the sun. If, however, he stops here, then he will definitely lose the world of earth, and the sacrificer is not prepared to enjoy immortality, until he has lived a full life : so he reverses the process, and returns to earth again. The same idea appears in the three steps of Viṣṇu, which the sacrificer steps and thus wins the way to the heaven, but he also must take care to descend again.⁶

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⁶ AB. iv. 22; PB. xviii. 10. 10; ÇB. i. 9. 3. 8-11.

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For the priest a very important rule must be noted : the sacrifice, as we have seen, dies eternally, and is eternally renewed, but this renewal must be conditioned by the giving of the fees to the priests : the sacrifice goes to heaven, the fee accompanies it, and by holding fast to the fee the sacrificer goes also.⁷ The man who sacrifices, without giving fees, is reserved for a dread fate : on him the Āptyas wipe off the sin which was communicated to them, when Indra slew the three-headed son of Tvaṣṭṛ, Viçvarūpa.⁸

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⁷ ÇB. i. 9. 3. 1; iv. 3. 8, &c.

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⁸ ÇB. ii. 2. 3. 4.

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It is not only, however, by the sacrifice proper that the sacrificer attains the gods : the consecration is a process by which he is given new birth, and becomes an embryo, his actions and his clothing being based on the comparison of him with such an embryo. His ordinary body, on the other hand, as we have seen, becomes an offering to the gods or by the gods. He himself is now in a state of extraordinary power, being filled with the sacrifice: if men eat his food, they take a third of any evil in him, those who speak ill of him a third, and the ants who bite him a third.¹

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¹ MS. iii. 6. 7; PB. v. 6. 10.

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The motive which induces the sacrificer to sacrifice and to undergo the painful self-torment, which is necessitated by the rite of consecration, is the possession of faith, which the Kauṣītaki Brāhmaṇa² declares to be the source of the abiding character of the sacrifice. Now faith is clearly allied to truth, and precision or truth is intimately associated with actual sight, as opposed to mere hearing: the principle of the Brāhmaṇas places sight as the highest source of truth.³ Faith in the sacrifice by gods and men is attained only by him who sacrifices with faith.⁴ Faith is, therefore, necessary in the sacrifice and also in the priest: if Vatsaprī Bhālandana was at first denounced as a thief by the seers, they were confuted by his winning faith through discovering the proper rite.⁵ A very odd story tells of the cows:⁶ they started a session for the purpose of obtaining horns: they received them after ten months, but some, not satisfied, not showing true faith, insisted on completing the year, where they won rich food, but lost their horns. Bṛhaspati, the priest of the gods, wins their faith by his discovery of the proper ritual.⁷ The sacrificer must realize, if he is to prosper, the fixed truth of the rule that the gods receive the offering and he the benediction accompanying it.⁸

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² vii. 4.

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³ ÇB. i. 3. 1. 27; MS. iii. 6. 3.

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⁴ TS. i. 6. 8. 1; MS. i. 4. 10; iv. 1. 4.

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⁵ MS. iii. 2. 3; PB. xii. 11. 25.

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⁶ TS. vii. 5. 1 and 2; PB. iv. 1. 1, 2; AB. iv. 17; JB. ii. 374. For curious speculations on its astronomical sense, see A. C. Das, *Rig-Vedic India*, i. 475 ff. Cf. PB. xxv. 3. 6.

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⁷ TS. vii. 4. 1. 1.

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⁸ ÇB. ii. 3. 4. 5; cf. TS. ii. 6. 10. 1.

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The importance of faith is such that it renders the gods of no importance, for the man who has faith realizes that the sacrifice produces its results without need of the gods. Atri is one of those whose deity is faith, Çraddhādeva: when he is in need he does not appeal to heaven, but invents the proper rite and disposes of his disabilities.⁹ The first father of men, Manu himself, is the believer in faith *par excellence*: his one aim is the sacrifice: with Iḍā as his daughter¹⁰ he repeoples the world after the deluge, and he continues his long course of sacrifices even down to the point that he is anxious to sacrifice his own wife at the bidding of the demons, Tṛṣṭa and Varutri, and has to be prevented from doing so by Indra, who induces him to let her go, when the fire had already been carried round her as a preliminary to the slaughter. But one version actually attributes to him the performance of the sacrifice at the suggestion of Kilāta and Ākuli, the Asura priests.¹¹ This faith in the sacrifice is encouraged by the long accounts given of the men who flourished by the use, and by the still longer lists of things, which by the sacrifice can be achieved automatically for men by the priests.

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⁹ TS. vii. 1. 8. 2.

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¹⁰ ÇB. i. 8. 1. 1–10. Güntert (*Der arische Weltkönig*, p. 346) sees in her a relic of the legend of the sacrifice of a bisexual giant (see below, Appendix B).

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¹¹ MS. iv. 1. 6; 8. 1; KS. ii. 30; ÇB. i. 1. 4. 14–17; TS. vi. 6. 1. The ÇB. recognizes the offering.

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The need of faith is the more obvious in that the sacrificer at the sacrifice is hopelessly given up into the hands of the priests. He can by manipulation deprive him of his senses, of his life, of his wealth, of his kingdom; if he thinks of him as he says the Vaṣaṭ call, he hurls upon him the thunderbolt which is contained in that call. The situation is repeatedly developed that the sacrificer may be hated by the priest, and the priest is then instructed how to ruin him: the idea that this is wrong is absolutely derided. But, even if the priest is honest, the sacrifice is a dread thing, a dangerous wild beast, which must be propitiated: the gods themselves suffered terrible mischief by imprudence: Pūṣan’s teeth were knocked out, Savitṛ’s hands cut off to be replaced with golden ones, and Bhaga lost his eyesight.¹ The priest Bhāllaveya made an error in the sacrifice: he fell and broke his arm.² Āṣāḍhi Sauçromateya thought fit to substitute heads picked up anywhere for the five heads of the victims to be slain at the building of the fire altar, and paid for it by his life.³ The priest is, therefore, a person, who has difficult tasks to perform, and whose services should not be despised: the effect of any offering is definite and precise, and it is idle to seek success in any haphazard manner.

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¹ TS. ii. 6. 8. 3; ÇB. i. 7. 4. 6–8; KB. vi. 13, 14. So Tvaṣṭṛ, by a wrong accent, destroyed his own son in place of Indra, TS. ii. 5. 2. 1; ÇB. i. 6. 3. 10 (*índra-çátru*, ‘foe of Indra’, mispronounced as *indra-çatru*, ‘having Indra for a foe’).

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² ÇB. i. 7. 3. 19.

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³ ÇB. vi. 2. 1. 37.

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The reward of the sacrificer for his efforts is, in the long run, one in the world to come: he may gain many desired things by the sacrifice and its manipulations in the present life, but these things are incidentals in the main offerings, a point in which they distinguish themselves from the occasional offerings, and from magic performances generally. The sacrifice is reduced in a sense to mere magic by the priests, but it is a performance which, unlike a magic rite or an offering set on foot for some definite object, must be performed regularly, and in it the profit acquired in this life is incidental, while the essential reward lies in the world to come. But this reward of immortality there is not to be construed in the sense that man should seek by an early death to obtain the world to come: on the contrary, in that world his place will be the better, the longer he lives: it is the aim of man not merely to achieve immortality, as eternal life hereafter, but also the full age of a hundred years, which is the allotted span of man. Those who die under twenty years of age by a weird conception attain as their abode the days and the nights, those under forty the half months, those under sixty the months, those under eighty the seasons, those under a hundred the year, and those over a hundred years the boon of immortality.⁴ The opposite of immortality is the repeated death, Punarmṛtyu,¹ of which men are in deep fear. The idea is that the passing once through death is not enough: even after death, when man is in enjoyment of the precious boon of immortality, he may be robbed of it, and have once again to face the terrors of dissolution, of which the Vedic Indian shows himself most deeply afraid. The idea of a second death is, however, that of a second death in the future life, not of rebirth on earth and death in the ordinary sense, and the conception obviously could lend itself to the idea that the death might be not once only, but for numberless occasions: though the idea is actually found in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa, where a distinction is made between those born for immortality after death in the world to come, and those born after death only to fall again and again into the power of death,² nevertheless the ordinary conception is merely that of a repetition of death. Moreover it must not be forgotten that this idea occurs in the later Brāhmaṇas such as the Kauṣītaki and the Çatapatha.³

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⁴ PB. xxiv. 19. 2; ÇB. x. 1. 5. 4; 2. 6. 8; the amount of eating necessary in the next world depends on the offerings made on earth, ÇB. x. 1. 5. 4.

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¹ ÇP. x. 2. 6. 19; 5. 1. 4; 6. 1. 4; xi. 4. 3. 20; 5. 6. 9; xii. 9. 3. 11, 12. Also in KB. But never in the early part of AB. It is a late idea in the Brāhmaṇas. It cannot be found in RV. x. 14. 14; ix. 113 despite Boyer, JA. 1901, ii. 466; Oldenberg, *Die Lehre der Upanishaden*, p. 27, n. 2.

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² ÇB. x. 4. 3. 10; cf. ii. 3. 3. 7, 8.

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³ Below, Chap. 28, § 10.

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The dead man, according to the agreement made by the gods with death, is not permitted to enter into immortality with his mortal body, which must be laid aside first. The way to the heaven despite that fact is even then not easy; the Ādityas⁴ among others seek to keep back those who aim at heaven, and in addition there are *en route* two fires which try to burn up those whom they should burn, but let pass those whom they ought to let pass.⁵ In what manner the discrimination is made nothing is said, and, as we have seen, there is no other trace of the doctrine of a divine judgement in the Vedic literature. Beyond these powers, however, the dead is subject to the power of the sun, which is death: all creatures below it are subject to death, those above are free. The sun owes its position in the heaven to the gods who established it there, and keep it from falling away from its high place. The sun indeed for a time did not appreciate the high honour thus paid: he returned to earth, but found it in the clutches of death: he therefore praised Agni, and won again his home in the heaven.⁶ The just men are the rays of the sun, and the constellations are appropriated to those good men who go to the world of heaven.⁷

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⁴ MS. i. 6. 12.

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⁵ ÇB. i. 9. 3. 2.

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⁶ ÇB. ii. 3. 3. 7, 8; TS. i. 5. 9. 3; PB. iv. 5. 9-11; TB. i. 2. 4. 2. The idea is clearly suggested by the fire ordeal.

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⁷ ÇB. vi. 5. 4. 8.

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The dead, however, do not always go to the gods: they may also go to the Fathers, who dwell in the third heaven. The difference of the ways is not explained, and remains as mysterious as the Fathers themselves. Of them diverse accounts are given: they are the children of Prajāpati, born before the gods and after the Asuras; they are the gods, who were slain in the fight with Vṛtra, brought to life as the Fathers.⁸ Incorporeal, they are compared to mind,⁹ as they cannot be seen. They correspond to the seasons, intermediate between the day, which is appropriate to man, and the year of the gods: they correspond to the world of the atmosphere which comes between the earth and the heaven, but their world is not there. With the gods they have been at variance: their chief Yama¹ used to deprive the gods of all that they had, until the intervention of Prajāpati led to the settlement of the dispute. The gods are compelled to share with the Fathers the sacrifice. To their worshippers they are a somewhat dreaded band:² they must be appeased by offerings of the fringe of one’s garment up to the age of fifty, and thereafter demand the offering of hair: their approach in the later period becomes closer and the need to buy off their demands by the redemption of oneself increases. When they come, it is said the Fathers take a man or they give one.³ They are also to be honoured by the sacrificer turning away his head, when they come to eat, even as the prince eats without the gaze of the people.⁴ They receive offerings for many reasons,⁵ to prevent their bringing death with them, to carry out the rule of following the usages of the gods who offered to them, to show benevolence to those whom the gods recalled to life, to elevate the sacrificer’s own Fathers to a better world, and to make good the injuries which one inflicts on oneself by misconduct.

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⁸ MS. iv. 1. 2; ÇB. ii. 6. 1. 1.

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⁹ PB. vi. 9. 19, 20.

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¹ MS. ii. 5. 3. Oltramare (*L’histoire des idées théosophiques*, i. 47, n. 1) thinks that RV. x. 88. 15 (VS. xix. 47) refers to a hostility of god and mortals on one side and the Fathers on the other. But the passage is hopelessly obscure; cf. ÇB. xii. 8. 1. 21; below, Chap. 28, § 11; Oldenberg’s note on RV. *l. c.*

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² The idea that their existence is something dream-like (ÇB. xii. 9. 2. 2, a false explanation of VS. xx. 16; cf. KU. vi. 5) is sporadic and unimportant.

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³ TB. i. 3. 10. 7.

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⁴ TB. i. 3. 10. 6 with comm.

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⁵ ÇB. ii. 1. 6. 3.

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Of quite special interest among these speculations is the theory of the piling of the sacred fire, which has peculiarities of its own and deserves, therefore, special consideration.⁶ The building of the fire altar, as we have seen, is no ordinary part of the ritual: it is not an essential part perhaps of any sacrifice at all, and it is perfectly clear that the elaboration of the performance meant that it was one to be undertaken only occasionally, and then by a rich noble or prince or Brahman. The essence of the piling is clearly mystic: it has the purpose of carrying out in ritual form the essential act of the reconstruction of Prajāpati, whose sacrifice as Puruṣa has resulted in the creation of the universe in all its parts. This sacrifice cannot be regarded as a single definite act in time: it is rather a constant process, and therefore the dismembered god must ever and again be renewed. The renewal is brought about by the reconstruction of Prajāpati in the shape of the fire altar. The mass of significant members connected in the ritual is noteworthy: the god himself is not merely identified with Puruṣa as is natural, but he is identical with Agni as fire: the identification is carried out in detail: the fire altar is a year in building, and the fire-pan which the sacrificer has is for a year carried about by him. The bricks for the altar are prepared while preparation is made of the fire-pan. The altar is arranged to represent earth, atmosphere, and heaven, and the same arrangement is devised in the fire-pan. The relations between Prajāpati and Agni are not absolutely simple: Prajāpati is the father of Agni, but also the son, since Agni restores him by the sacrifice, and the fire altar is the body of Agni, through which Prajāpati is built up. Agni is also the child of the waters—which in their turn are created by Prajāpati—and in the fire altar there is laid at the bottom a lotus leaf from which Agni is born. The bird shape of the fire altar is also often referred to as well as the mortal shape: the bird shape is clearly connected with the myth of Agni in lightning form bringing down the Soma from the sky: the Soma, moreover, as the sacrifice *par excellence*, is, as was inevitable, identified with Prajāpati. The bird altar has, however, another aspect: the bird is to fly to the sky as the sacrifice, and with the bird the sacrificer who is identified with Prajāpati is to attain the sky.¹ In the piling of the altar the symbolism is carried out in the form of the gold disk, a symbol of the sun, which is placed over the lotus, and over which again is placed the golden image of a man, above whom lie in the first, third, and fifth layers of the pile the three naturally perforated bricks, representing the three worlds, through which the golden man can breathe, and through which the sacrificer must rise to the sun. The symbolism is effective: the ideas of the sun, the god Agni, the all-creator, and the sacrificer, as identical, and the nature of the sacrifice as leading to the world of heaven, are as efficiently produced by the ritual, as can be well conceived.

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⁶ Eggeling, SBE. xliii. pp. xv–xxvii; Keith, *Taittirīya Saṁhitā*, i, pp. cxxv-cxxviii; Oldenberg, GN. 1917, pp. 9 ff.

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¹ Oldenberg (*loc. cit.*) takes this as the essence of the rite, but though he justly insists on the non-popular character of the belief, he does not disprove the view of Eggeling, which is strongly supported by the Çatapatha.

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The ritual as it is seen in the texts of the Black Yajurveda does not seem to go beyond these conceptions, but the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa in the tenth book,² doubtless a later addition to the text, which deals with the secret of the fire, develops the theme more philosophically. Prajāpati is the year, for he is essentially, as the creator, time, and the year is at once the symbol of time, and the period in which the working of nature completes a round, and commences again. The year of the piling of the altar, and the carrying of the fire in the fire-pan by the sacrificer, has been already mentioned: the year is symbolic also of birth: Agni must be borne for a year in the fire-pan before he is brought to life as the fire on the altar itself. In the acts of carrying him in the pan the sacrificer takes Agni into himself and in the fullness of time he brings him forth from himself, in accordance with the doctrine that the father of Agni is Prajāpati, the sacrificer himself. But the fact that Prajāpati is time, and that the sacrificer is identical with Prajāpati as time, has another and important side: the effect of time must be that, even if a man attain, as the piling of the altar will aid him to attain, the full life of a hundred years, still he must die, and he dies thus as death itself by his own hands, passing from the realm of material existence and its troubles and limitations to the eternal and abiding happiness of the life to come.¹ But the Brāhmaṇa goes further than this and attributes to Çāṇḍilya the doctrine that the ultimate essence of Prajāpati, of the sacrificer, and therefore of the universe, is mind, from which develop speech, the breath, the eye, the ear, work, fire. The final reality is summed up as the self, made up of intelligence, with a body of spirit, a form of light, and an ethereal nature, which pervades the regions and upholds the universe, though devoid of speech and mental affects. Or, again, it is said that the Puruṣa in the heart is as a grain of rice or granule of millet; like smokeless light, it is greater than the heaven, the atmosphere, and the earth, than all existing things: the self of the spirit is the self of man, and on passing away from life he attains that self. The changed spirit of the speculation in the course of time cannot be better illustrated than by this view, for the Taittirīya Saṁhitā holds closely to the material view that the result of the offering in the next world is to secure the sacrificer his self and his breath therein. The continuance as nearly as possible in the same condition as before of the existence on earth is the ideal of the Saṁhitā: it has been transmuted by the wisdom of Çāṇḍilya ² into a conception which seeks in its grand manner to solve the question of the existence of the universe and of the individual, by finding in them both the expression of a single spiritual principle. The impression of later growth thus engendered is supported, and made beyond reasonable doubt, not merely by the evidence of language, but by the fact that it is precisely this book of the Çatapatha which gives us the conception of the repetition, not once merely, of death in the world to come.³ The philosophy of the Brāhmaṇas is merging into that of the Upaniṣads.

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² x. 3. 3 and 6. 4. The Brāhmaṇas and the Upaniṣads alike have no really philosophic discussion of time which they take for granted; cf. Walleser, *Die philosophische Grundlage d. ält. Buddhismus*, pp. 123-33; below, Chap 28, § 8. A doctrine of time as the absolute (*brahman*) is mentioned, to be rejected, in the Çvetāçvatara Upaniṣad. See also Keith, *Buddhist Philosophy*, pp. 163-8.

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¹ This connexion of birth and the year may conceivably be due to the old view—apparently Indo-European—of the year of ten months of gestation, which may be found in the Rigveda as in ancient Rome. Buddhist tradition insists on ten months precisely as the period of his stay in the womb (Windisch, *Buddha's Geburt*, pp. 120 ff.); Hopkins (*JAOS.* xxiv. 19, 392) thinks references to the year are only periods within which, which would prove nothing for a ten months' year. His view that the month is twenty-seven or twenty-eight days in the popular reckoning is counter to the fact that birth is placed in the tenth month, not at the end, so that his month is too short. Probably the thirty-day month is all that is meant. Buddha is clearly a miraculous child.

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² ÇB. x. 6. 4.

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³ Lindenau's suggestion (*ZII.* i. 48, n. 2) that AV. xiii. 3. 7 enunciates, as regards Rohita, the doctrine of the necessary mortality of the highest being, so far as involved in the empiric world, rests on a dubious translation.

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