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Purushartha Siddhyupaya
75
however trifling. Homer teaches that gods and kings alike are persuaded by gifts. Not only in Canaan, but among the Greeks, there is evidence that cereal oblations had a great place in early ritual, though afterwards they became second in importance to animal sacrifices, which yielded a more luxurious sacrificial banquet. With some people the idea of sacrifice is that God has need of the worshipper and his gifts, just as the worshipper has need of God and His help; and thus with a matter-of-fact business-like people like the Romans, religion became very much a sort of bargain struck with the gods. In general, however, we find an extraordinary persistence of the notion that sacrifices do in some way afford a physical satisfaction to the deity.
The notion that the more ethereal elements of the sacrifice rise to heaven, the seat of the gods, in the savoury smoke that ascends from the sacrificial flame, was of later development. Among the Semites, sacrifices were not originally burned. God was not seated aloft, but was present at the place of sacrifice, inhabiting a sacred stone. A refinement of the original usage" was that the food spread on the tables of the gods is eaten by his ministers, the priests to whom he is supposed to make over the enjoyment of the banquet. In olden times the gods themselves were held to partake of these gifts of food, just as the venerable dead were fed by meat and drink, placed or poured out upon their tombs. In the religion of savages, both gods and the dead have very material needs among which the need of nourishment has the first place.* Among Greeks of the seventh century B.C., sacrifices to water-gods were simply flung into the river or sea; and sacrifices to underground gods were buried, indicating the idea that the gods were too ethereal to enjoy a sacrifice through any other sense than that of smell. Primarily, a sacrifice is a feast of which the gods and the worshippers partake together. The tendency was to give to all feasts, nay to all meals, a sacrificial character by inviting the gods to partake of them. The Arabian invocation of the name of Allah over every beast killed for food is a relic of sacrificial formula. Among old Aryans, the sacrificial feast has had as its chief feature the Somaras, wine which "cheereth gods and men'.† The sacrificial meal was common to all the nature religions of the civilized races of antiquity. With the breakdown of this type of religion, the sacrificial ritual went under corresponding modification. Human sacrifices are associated with cannibalism, which means eating the flesh of men of alien nation or of hostile kin.‡
The idea that God is the Lord of Creation; and hence the best, the most innocent and the purest of his creatures should be offered to Him, accounts for the sacrifice of a son, of infants, of young boys, of human beings (¤), of cows (), of horses (), of buffaloes, goats (), sheep, cocks, etc.
* Herodotus V-92. † Judges IX-13.
Encyclopaedia Brittannica.
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