Yasastilaka and Indian Culture

SR No.: 001609
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Krishnakant Handiqui
Publisher: Jain Sanskruti Samrakshak Sangh Solapur
Publication Year: 1968
Total Pages: 566
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Story, Literature, & Culture
File Size: 16 MB

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YASASTILAKA AND INDIAN CULTURE
In Yasastilaka, Book IV, Somadeva quotes a Vedic phrase en aguhi , and opines that the Veda sanctions the killing of a Brāhmana in spite of the general injunction that a Brāhmaṇa should not be killed. We are not here concerned with the question of whether traces of human sacrifice are found in the Vedic age, but the phrase cited by Somadeva belongs to the ritual of the Puruşamedha which is wrongly supposed by him to be a human sacrifice. The Puruşamedha was a symbolic rite, and the human victims, men as well as women, who were actually tied to the sacrificial posts, were set free, one and all, after the paryagnikarana or carrying of a firebrand round the victims. These are enumerated in the Vājasaneyisamhitā XXX. 5-22 and the Taittiriya Brāhmana III. 4, while the Satapatha Brāhmang (XIII. 6. 2. 12, 13) says: ".........Now, the victims had the fire carried round them, but they were not yet slaughtered. Then a voice said to him, (Purusha, do not consummate (these human victims): if thou wert to consummate them, man (purusha) would eat man! Accordingly, as soon as fire had been carried round them, he set them free, and offered oblations to the same divinities..................," The Kātyāyana Srauta Sūtra XXI. 1. 12 clearly says that the Brāhmaṇas and the other victims are released, just as the Kapiñjala birds and the other wild animals are set free in the Aśvamedha after the paryagnikarana (XX. 6. 9). It is true that there are two Śrauta Sūtras, Vaitāna (XXXVII. 10 ff.) and Sankhāyana (XVI.10 ff.), which set forth a form of Puruşamedha in which a man is to be sacrificed, but these Sūtras lack Brāhmaņa authority for what they prescribe; and as Eggeling points out, the Puruşamedha described therein “is nothing more than what Sāńkhāyana appears to claim for it, viz. an adaptation, and that a comparatively modern adaptation, of the existing Aśvamedha ritual.” Further, " the very fact that, in both Sūtra works, this sacrifice is represented as being undertaken, not for the great object of winning immortal life, but for the healing of the Sacrificer's bodily infirmities, might seem sufficient to stamp the ceremony as one partaking more of the nature of the superstitious rites of the Atharvan priests than of that of the great sacrifices of the traditional Srauta ritual." 3 According to Keith, the ritual prescribed in the versions of Sāňkhāyana and the Vaitāna “is a mere priestly invention to fill up the apparent gap in the sacrificial system which provided no place for man."' + Hillebrandt gives too much importance to the version of Sāńkhāyana and remarks that the
1 See Chap. XII. 2 Eggeling's Translation, Part V, p. 410. 3 Eggeling : Satapatha Brāhmaṇa, Trans., Part V, Introduction, p. xliv. 4 Taittiriya Saihita, Trans., Introduction, p. cxxxviii.