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ON HUMAN SACRIFICES IN THE
origin also in notions of divination, as was the case in the worship of Mithra, when anguries were taken from the entrails of human victims*; and they seem in some instances to have been suggested by a purely sanguinary spirit, as was the case with the perpetually recurring sacrifices to Baal and Moloch in the Phænician Colonies, and especially in Carthage'. No inti. mations of any such purposes are traceable in the indistinct allusions to human sacrifices in the Veda. Their object seems to have been the propitiation of some divinity, by devoting to him that which was most precions to the sacrificer. This feeling seems also to have been very widely diffused throughout the East in the most ancient times, as was the practice of the individual of pledging himself to the act by a solemn promise or vow. We might infer that the practice was not imknown to the patriarchal era, from the conduct of Abraham when commanded to offer up his son; for although he would not under any circumstances have hesitated to obey the divine command, yet he might, consistently with his obedience, have expressed some surprise at the injunction, had the pour port of it been wholly unfamiliar. At a later date in the Jewish history we have a similar sort of sacrifice under a solemn previous engagement in the vow of Jephtha; and it is worthy of remark that one of
* [Windischmann, Mithra. Leipzig: 1857, p. 68.]
See Bryant's Chapter on Anthropothusia and Teknothusia, Vol. VI, p. 296.
