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APPENDIX III
competing sacrifice in TS 2.2.9.7. Somebody whose rival performs a soma-sacrifice in order to harm him should offer a counter sacrifice in which a sacrificial cake is substituted for the cow to Mitra and Varuņa. Here an animal sacrifice is replaced by a vegetal one. But we should not draw any far-reaching conclusions from this passage. It does not amount to a step towards ahimsā since the agnişomīya pašu is not eliminated. It is rather an attempt to foil an expensive sacrifice by a less expensive one.
In the passage quoted by Heesterman we read that the head of the sacrifice was cut off and the sacrificial essence had flowed into the cow (KS 29.4). With the sacrifice of the cow one provides the sacrificer with sacrificial essence. Mitra took what was sacrificed well, and Varuna what was sacrificed badly. Thereby the sacrificer is freed from Mitra and Varuna, and the cow serves to pacify the sacrifice. The text does not identify the head, [225] MS and TS 6.6.7 do not mention it at all. MS ends with the statement that with the sacrifice of the cow the sacrificer puts right everything done incorrectly in the ritual. From this Heesterman concludes that here the idea of killing has been replaced by the concept of the mistake. But there is no indication that what is incorrectly done refers to the animal sacrifice
Possibly TS can lead us to the identification of the head of the sacrifice in this instance. Here the passage ends with the statement that the metres of the sacrificer were exhausted and that the cow is the essence of the metres by whose sacrifice the metres regain their essence. A comparison with TS 2.1.7 (cf. KS 13.8. MS 2.5.7) would seem to confirm the conclusion that the metres are the head of the sacrifice. We read that the vaşat-call split the head of the Gāyatrī. Bịhaspati seized the sap which flowed out first, and it became a white-backed cow; Mitra and Varuņa seized the second part of the sap, and it became a two-coloured cow; the All-gods seized the third part, and it became a many-coloured cow; the fourth part fell on the earth, Bệhaspati seized it, and it became a bull-calf; Rudra seized the blood, it became a fierce red cow. Here we have several bovines which are the sap of the metres; each of them is to gain specific favours from the gods concerned. The general sense seems to be that by sacrificing the cows one brings the sap of the metres in circulation again.
Although I agree with Heesterman insofar as the original decapitation of the victim at the pole - as presupposed by RV 1.162.9 - was replaced by strangulation, I think that the reason for this was not the progressing elimination of violence, but rather a change in
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