None

Lars Martin Fosse lmfosse at ONLINE.NO
Wed Apr 22 16:00:34 UTC 1998


At 10:36 22.04.98 -0400, you wrote:
>Jean Fezas said about the  human sacrifice reported from Jambewa:
>
>"If this murder it is the first (and only) incident of this kind, it has
nothing to
>do with a ritual.
>If there is no ritual it is not  a "brutal human sacrifice" it is an
instance of
>mental illness..."
>
>Not quite.  It's the first reported from this locality, not the first in
India.  After
>all, one can buy the Kalikapurana in the bazar and find a ritual for human
>sacrifice in it.
>
>Allen Thrasher

Hm. Not quite?. I think it depends upon how "human sacrifice" is treated in
practical life. It can for instance be regarded as a symbolic event and not
necessarily entail the killing of a human being. If we go back 2000 years or
so (or in Scandinavia, merely a 1000 years), human sacrifice was practiced
on a regular basis as part of a (mainstream) cult (e.g. at the "hov" in
Uppsala, where people were hanged as sacrifices to Odin/Wotan according to
Adam of Bremen). Hinduism does not practice human sacrifice as a matter of
course, to the contrary, there is very early a reaction against all sorts of
bloody sacrifices. The case reported here recently about a man who
sacrificed his son is in my opinion clearly pathological. So I still think
human sacrifices in India should be relegated to the field of psychiatry
rather than the field of Indology.


Best regards,

Lars Martin Fosse


Dr.art. Lars Martin Fosse
Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114,
0674 Oslo

Tel: +47 22 32 12 19
Fax: +47 22 32 12 19
Email: lmfosse at online.no
Mobile phone: 90 91 91 45





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