Khambesvari puujaa with Buffalo sacrifice

[N. Ganesan]

Dr. Hodge wrote:
>Can this also be connected with the Kondh Meriah sacrifices in Orissa
>which once involved human sacrifice until the 1850s when the British
>(interfering as usual) outlawed the practice and encouraged the
>substitution of the buffalo which is still used.

Human sacrifice was fairly widespread in both space and time.

"Human beings were sacrificed on the stone by cutting through theit
necks and separating the head from the body. The bodies
were kept together at one place, but the three heads were
picked up and arranged in the form of a hearth.
Food was cooked on this hearth."
(S. Silva 1955. Traces of human sacrifices in Kanara.
Anthropos 50:577-92)

> From Parpola, Savitri and Resurrection, 1998, p. 249
"One of the most famous Indus seals (fig. 2) depicts a horned
deity standing inside a fig tree, and a human looking
who wears a similar horned head-dress and kneels in front
of the tree with hands raised in respectful salutation or
prayer. The worshipper, probably the chief priest of the
deity who possessed this seal, is flanked by a human faced
markhor goat, and beneath the tree, a low altar or table
on which is placed a human head, identifiable as that of
a warrior from its 'double-bun' hairstyle which recurs everywhere
in fighting scenes and is of Mesopotomian origin. ...
The decapitated victim is likely to have been the groom
in a 'sacred marriage' performed at the new year festiavl, ..."

In the Buddhist DhonasAkha JAtaka, a king is advised by priests
to sarifice 1000 captured princes. In the Dummedha-JAtaka, people
worship a vaTa-yakSiNI by sacrificing different kinds of animals
and by ornamenting the tree wth the entrails and blood of the
victims and offering the raw flesh. They wish the yakshi
will grant them children, and wealth.

Regards,
N. Ganesan

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