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HISTORY OF VEGETARIANISM IN INDIA
accordingly equals an animal sacrifice (AB 2.8-9. ŚB 1.2.3.6-9. MS 3.10.2). The Vādhūla-Sūtra (IV 19a, cf. Heesterman 1985: 62) explicitly connects this with the creation of agriculture. It is of course tempting to see here at least the beginning of an abolition of animal sacrifices, and this conclusion was drawn by Max Müller (cf. Eggeling's note on ŚB: Lévi 136ff.). In my opinion it is, however, more than doubtful that the general replacement of animal sacrifice by vegetal sacrifice was intended. The fact that the kimpuruşa, etc. are declared unfit for sacrifice and therefore also inedible implies that the original victims remained edible in principle, fit for sacrifice. Also the use of the cake in the real animal sacrifice militates against the vegetarian interpretation; the cake here serves to put the sacrificial sap into the animals (ŚB 3.8.3.1-2. KB 10.5. AB 2.8–9. MS 3.10.2). I should [212] infer from the story only an upgrading of the vegetal sacrifice, caused probably by economic changes. The farmer will have kept only a few cattle, mainly as draught animals and milk-producers. When the solemn sacrifice was no longer the privilege of the rich magnates, and also the less affluent brahmin wanted to make his contribution and obtain the merit of the sacrifice, an upgrading of the more modest sacrifices had to follow. The Vādhūla version, in which two fishes bring the agricultural implements and warn the gods not to sacrifice before rice and barley have multiplied, gives an ecological argument. Ecological concern is also attested in Mbh 3.244 where the Pandavas move from a forest whose herds have been reduced by hunting to another one where there is plentiful game. Economic and ecological considerations may later have favoured vegetarianism, but were hardly its ultimate cause.
2. Vādhūla IV 74 teaches the equivalence of the soma with barley and rice and of the agnisțoma with the brahmaudana; at the end Vādhūla says that he prefers twelve rice-mess bowls to the somasacrifice and the dakşiņās. It is difficult to guess Vādhūla's motives, but possibly he advocates a more modest sacrifice.
3. Vādhūla IV 108 (cf. Witzel 391f.) reports that formerly one offered a human victim at the agnicayana; it was successively substituted by a horse and a hornless goat. The original five victims - man, horse, bull, ram, goat - whose heads had to be built into the fire-altar were released and substituted by effigies made of rice and barley (or in case of a long dīksā of clay or gravel: Vādhūla III 59). Since the human head is talked about at length in III 59, one wonders where it comes from. Actually, the systematizers of the ritual were in a dilemma as the many contradictory versions in the other texts show, on which we have the illuminating exposition of Heesterman
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