23. Animal sacrifices in Indian ritual.
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Russell, R. V. (Robert Vane)
Among high-caste Hindus also sacrifices, including the killing of cows, were at one time legal. This is shown by several legends,52 and is also a historical fact. One of Asoka’s royal edicts prohibited at the capital the celebration of animal sacrifices and merry-makings involving the use of meat, but in the provinces apparently they continued to be lawful.53 This indicates that prior to the rise of Buddhism such sacrifices had been customary, and also that when a feast was to be given, involving the consumption of meat, the animal was offered as a sacrifice. It is noteworthy that Asoka’s rules do not forbid the slaughter of cows.54 In ancient times also the most important royal sacrifice was that of the horse. The development of religious belief and practice in connection with the killing of domestic animals has thus proceeded on exactly opposite lines in India as compared with most of the world. Domestic animals have become more instead of less sacred and several of them cannot be killed at all. The reason usually given to account for this is the belief in the transmigration of souls, leading to the conclusion that the bodies of animals might be tenanted by human souls. Probably also Buddhism left powerful traces of its influence on the Hindu view of the sanctity of animal life even after it had ceased to be the state religion.
Perhaps the Brāhmans desired to make their faith more popular and took advantage of the favourite reverence of all cultivators for the cow to exalt her into one of their most powerful deities, and at the same time to extend the local cult of Krishna, the divine cowherd, thus following exactly the contrary course to that taken by Moses with the golden calf. Generally the growth of political and national feeling has mainly operated to limit the influence of the priesthood, and the spread of education and development of reasoned criticism and discussion have softened the strictness of religious observance and ritual. Both these factors have been almost entirely wanting in Hindu society, and this perhaps explains the continued sanctity attaching to the lives of domestic animals as well as the unabated power of the caste system.
Source notes
1 (London, A. & C. Black.)
2 This definition of totemism is more or less in accord with that held by the late Professor Robertson Smith, but is not generally accepted. The exhaustive collection of totemic beliefs and customs contained in Sir J. G. Frazer’s Totemism and Exogamy affords, however, substantial evidence in favour of it among tribes still in the hunting stage in Australia, North America and Africa. The Indian form of totemism is, in the writer’s opinion, a later one, arising when the totem animal has ceased to be the main source of life, and when the clan come to think that they are descended from their totem animal and that the spirits of their ancestors pass into the totem animal. When this belief arises, they cease eating the totem as a mark of veneration and respect, and abstain from killing or injuring it. Finally the totem comes to be little more than a clan-name or family name, which serves the purpose of preventing marriage between persons related through males, who believe themselves to be descended from a common ancestor.
3Orphéus (Heinemann), p. 197.
4 Lane, Modern Egyptians, p. 248.
5Orphéus, p. 47.
6Ibidem, p. 50.
7B. G. Parsis of Gujarāt, pp. 232, 241.
8Orphéus, pp. 101, 102.
9Ibidem, p. 204.
10Ibidem, p. 144.
11Ibidem, p. 169.
12 D. M. Flinders-Petrie, Egypt and Israel, p. 61.
13 Gomme, Folk-lore as a Historical Science, p. 161.
14 Haug’s Essays on the Parsis, p. 286.
15Golden Bough, ii. pp. 299–301. See article on Kumhār.
16Orphéus, p. 139.
17Orphéus, pp. 119, 120.
18Ibidem, p. 144.
19Religions, Ancient and Modern, Ancient Rome, Cyril Bailey, p. 86.
20Religions, Ancient and Modern, Ancient Egypt, Professor Flinders-Petrie, p. 22.
21Religions, Ancient and Modern, Ancient Egypt, Professor Flinders-Petrie, pp. 24, 26.
22Vide article on Bania.
23Dowson’s and Garrett’s Classical Dictionaries, art. Kartikeya.
24Religion of the Semites, p. 265.
25Ibidem, pp. 269, 270.
26Religion of the Semites, pp. 270, 271.
27Ibidem, pp. 273, 274.
28Religion of the Semites, p. 289.
29Ibidem, p. 313.
30Religion of the Semites, p. 271.
31Religion of the Semites, p. 275.
32Golden Bough, ii. p. 321.
33Vide art. Kumhār.
34Religion of the Semites, p. 338.
35Ibidem, p. 281.
36 Dr Jevons, Introduction to the History of Religion, p. 150.
37Religion of the Semites, p. 285.
38Orphéus, pp. 123, 125.