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How to Kill a Sacrificial Victim*
Hanns-Peter Schmidt
In the description of the animal sacrifice in the Satapatha-Brāhmaṇa 3.8.1.15 we find a statement about three ways of killing a victim :
“Then, having come back (from the place of slaughter), they (the priests) sit down turning towards the Āhavanīya (thinking) : 'let us not be eyewitnesses to (the 'victim's) being made consent (to its death)'. They do not strike it with a hammer (or cudgel] (kútena prághnanti), for that is the way (to slay an animal) for man (manusam), nor behind the ear, for that is the way for the Fathers (pitrdevatyàm). They either suffocate it by closing its mouth or they make a noose (for strangling it). Therefore he (the Adhvaryu) does not say: 'slay it, kill it !', for that is the way for man, but : 'make it consent ! It has passed on', for that is the way for the gods (devatrá). For when he says : 'it has passed on', then it passes on to the gods; therefore he says: 'it has passed on'."
Eggeling translated kútena by 'on the frontal bone', but grammatically this is incorrect, and, as Oldenberg has shown, the word kùţa means ‘hammer", to which one might prefer 'cudgel'.
For mánuşam, Eggeling has 'for that is human manner, for pitrdevatyàm 'after the manner of the Father', and for devatrá “after the manner of the gods'.
The translation of pitrdevatyám is incorrect since the word means 'having the Pitrs as deities', and thus can only refer to the worship of the fathers. Generally the victims for the fathers are killed the same way as those for the gods, but according to Kātyāyana Srautasūtra 25.7.34 at the funeral the
