Khambesvari puujaa with buffalo sacrifice

[Stephen Hodge]

N. Ganesan wrote:
> Human sacrifice was fairly widespread in both space and time.
Indeed -- many examples are known from Europe.  Do you know if, in
India, the common fiction of the "willing victim" was current ?

I also note that your examples all seem involve decapitation or at
least the shedding and daubing of blood in some way.  AFAIK,
strangulation seems to have perhaps been more popular among Neolithic
Europeans -- as witnessed by the well-preserved bodies, thought to
have been sacrificial, retrived from various bogs.  Though one
supposes that blood sacrifices may have also been wide-spread but the
bog-people are the only victims whose bodies happen to have survived.
The Celts practised head-hunting and had a cult of skulls but for
really gory sacrifices some of the Nordic people were outstanding as
Roman (and later) accounts relate.  The so-called "spread-eagle"
sacrifice was particularly imaginative -- the victim's chest was cut
open (while alive), the rib-cage expanded and the lungs pulled out and
draped over the shoulders like wings !   After that, plain old
decapitation seems rather boring :)    One also wonders whether the
practice of hanging, drawing and quartering is a vestige of some form
of sacrifice.

Best wishes,
Stephen Hodge