________________
ON HUMAN SACRIFICES.
V.
ON
HUMAN SACRIFICES
IN THE
247
ANCIENT RELIGION OF INDIA.
From the Journal of the R. Asiatic Society, Vol. VIII (1852), p. 96-107.
I PROPOSE to offer to the Society some illustrations of the sacrifice of human beings as an element of the ancient religion of India.
In the first book of the Rámáyana* a curious legend is narrated of the son of the Rishi Richíka, named Sunańśepha, who was sold by his father for a hundred thousand cows to Ambarisha, the king of Ayodhya, to supply the place of a sacrificial animal or victim'
*
[c. 61 f. Schlegel, c. 63 f. Gorresio. Comp. also Muir's Sanskrit Texts, I, 104 ff.]
Schlegel's reading is yajna-pasu, which he renders simply by victima. Gorresio's text is more explicit: in the first place the victim is carried off from the post whilst the king is engaged, nara-medhena, "intanto ch'egli offriva un sacrifizio umano ;" and in the next it is said, in a rather questionable hemistich, however, that the theft was a man endowed with all lucky marks, appointed to be a victim, naram lakshana-sampúriam pasutwe niyo
