________________
HISTORY OF VEGETARIANISM IN INDIA
the relation to blood. It is well-known that the blood is offered to the demons (rākṣasa) and at different occasions also to Rudra and his cohorts (aśvamedha TS 1.4.36. ŚB 13.3.4.2ff. śūlagava PGS 3.8.11). The blood must remain outside the place of sacrifice, quite in contrast to ancient Greek ritual where the altar is swimming in blood. The cause for this change cannot be deduced from our sources, but one can surmise that it is based on a reaction against the customs of inimical neighbours, be they Aryan or non-Aryan. Decapitation is still today the rule in non-Vedic Hindu ritual.
Even if we concede that the use of the head in the sacrifice was abandoned and, as Heesterman (1967, reprinted 1985: 45–58) has argued, procuring the head of the victim posed difficulties for the later ritualists in specific cases, this does not account for the metaphoric use of the 'head of the sacrifice' in the context of the cow for Mitra and Varuņa. This cow is killed in atonement for cutting off the 'head of the sacrifice' identifiable as the metres. There is no indication that here the ritualists replaced the agnişomīya pasu by the metres, and thus took a step toward non-violence.
It should not be overlooked that the Vedic ritualists were quite aware of the violence and cruelty involved in strangulation. Amends had to be made when the victim uttered a cry or beat its breast with its feet (TS 3.1.4.3; 3.1.5.2). The fact that the possibility of long suffering was greater in the case of strangulation than in case of decapitation certainly did not escape the notice of the ritualists.
Heesterman proceeds from his rather shaky basis to turn the development of the ahimsā idea I had reconstructed on its head. He thinks that it started from an originally violent pattern of sacrifice of the ksatriyas [226] which was replaced by a ritualistic system of the brahmins which reduced violence to a minimum. For this purpose he wants to take the argument further back than the ritual ahimsā-theory.
It is not Heesterman's aim to prove that the ritual ahimsā-theory is young, but rather to determine the source in which ahimsā and vegetarianism have united. He believes to have found it in the dīkṣita, the person consecrated for the sacrifice. The state of the dīkṣita lasts 'till ... the sacrificer empties himself of his accumulated power in gifts (dakşiņā) and sacrificial offerings'. In the stereotyped animal and soma sacrifices the dīkņā period is rather short and does not allow extensive activities. Furthermore the dīkṣita must stay in his hut, but he can send out others to beg or rob goods for him which he later distributes as dakṣiņās (cf. Heesterman 1959: 248). In the more complicated rituals of the rājasūya and the aśvamedha the time of the
156 For Personal & Private Use Only
Jain Education International
www.jainelibrary.org
