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of valuable garments, kine, horses, or gold ;- when each is to be given is carefully stated. Gold is coveted most, for this is immortality, the seed of Agni,' and therefore peculiarly agreeable to the pious priest."
It would be unnecessary to go into the intermin. able detail of such sacrifices. They are expounded very fully and carefully in Professor Hillebrandt's standard works on the subject. The expense must have been very great, even for the less complicated; and it is probable that this had something to do with the fact that a way was discovered to obtain the desired result without sacrifice.
The nearer we get to the time of Buddhism the greater is the importance we find attached to this second method, that of tapas, --self-mortification, or more exactly, self-torture. The word occurs, in this its technical sense, in the latest hymns included in the Rig Veda. It is literally “burning, glow”; and had then already acquired the secondary sense of retirement into solitude in the forest, and the practise there of austerity, bodily self-mortification,not at all with the idea of atonement or penance, but under the impression that self-torture of this kind would bring about magical results. Just as the sacrificer was supposed, by a sort of charm that his priests worked for him in the sacrifice, to compel the gods, and to attain ends he desired, so there was supposed to be a sort of charm in tapas by which a man could, through and by himself, attain
"Hopkins, Religions of India, 192.
? Altindische neu -und vollmondsopfer, Jena, 1879, and Ritual. literatur, l'edische Opfir wie Zauber, Strasburg, 1997.
Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
www.umaragyanbhandar.com
