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APPENDIX II
The ritualists were however deeply concerned with the killing and injuring of animate beings which occurs in the sacrifice itself. It appears from the Bhrgu-legend that they were animists who treated trees, plants and the elements (water is mentioned in the legend)
na par with men and animals. Killing and hurting creatures had undesirable consequences which must be eliminated. [646]
The most general theory for eliminating the killing in the sacrifice is the conception that the victim or the offering is reborn from the fire in which it is offered:
They kill, in truth, this sacrifice when they perform it; and when they press out the King (Soma), then they kill him; and when they make an animal consent and cut it up, then they kill it; by pestle and mortar and by the two millstones they kill the haviryajña. After having killed the sacrifice he (the adhvaryu) pours it which has become seed into the fire as its womb, for the womb of the sacrifice is, in truth, the fire; from that (the fire) it (the sacrifice) is reborn.297
In general the words 'to kill' and 'to die' are not used. For leading the animal up for sacrifice and killing it â labhate'"he takes hold of" is substituted, for killing alone sam jñapayati "he makes consent"' 298 The slaughterer is called samitr 'appeaser'.299 And where the killing and dying is explicitly stated - as in the passage just cited, it is done only in order to nullify or to deny it on the spot. The idea that the animal does not die, but goes to the gods whose herd it joins, is attested already in the Ķgveda.300 And a Brāhmaṇa says: "Not to
297 SB 11, 1, 2, 1-2 ghnanti vā etad yajñam, yad enam tanvate yan nv eva rājānam
abhişunvanti tat tam ghnanti yat paśum samjñapayanti viśāsati tat tam ghnanty ulūkhalamusalābhyām drsadupalābhyam haviryajñam ghnanti. tam hatvā yajñam, agnāv eva yonau reto bhūtam siñcaty agnir vai yonir yajñasya sa tataḥ
prajāyate. 298 Cf. H. OERTEL, 'Euphemismen in der vedischen Prosa', Sitzungsber. d.
Bayer. Akad. d. Wiss. Phil.-hist. Abt. 1942. 8,6 sqq. Add ā sthāpayati 'to make
stop' and gamayati 'to make go'. 299 šamāyati in the connotation 'to kill' is not used for the killing of the victim
in the Brāhrnaņa-texts: cf. OERTEL, loc. cit., 8 sq.; it occurs in this context
first in Vaitāna Sūtra 10, 18. 300 RV 1, 162, 21.
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