--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "kishore patnaik"
<kishorepatnaik09@...> wrote:
> Very beautifully put. I am enjoying your questions. I think what
> you meant by open heart surgeries is open up somebody's heart
> to sacrifice it to the deity. The main stream (aryan?) Indians do
> not follow this.
I don't know what "mainstream Indians" means here, yet it is quite
certain that lots of human victims, generally male, have been
offered as a Tantric sacrifice to Hindu goddesses by very
much "Aryan" Hindu kings and feudal chiefs in historical times, and
till comparatively recent times. The method resorted to for their
immolation was, as a norm, decapitation.
As for human sacrifice in Vedic (i.e. prehistoric) times:
The set of canonical sacrificial victims, the pancapashu doctrine,
includes, from the bottom up, goat, sheep, cow, horse, and human. If
you want to get the attention of the gods then you are obliged at a
minimum to sacrifice one of these. As you move up the ladder from
bottom to top you increase the charge of your sacrifice. The power
of human sacrifice (purushamedha) is well-known in Vedic. The horse
sacrifice (ashvamedha) is conceptually a substitute for the
purushamedha. Historically, the horse sacrifice is the centerpiece
of Vedic ritual and the purushamedha may well be a later development
within Vedic, that is, a substitution upward. But the logic of Vedic
sacrificial ideology assumes the priority of human sacrifice, and
ultimately self-sacrifice.
The purushamedha ritual tradition was continued well down to the
late Vedic period, and persisted here and there, for example in
doctrinal debates. It was later on "revived" in Tantric cults
devoted to goddesses, whatever the origin. Many Tantric texts
discuss human sacrifices, and for the "last performed" ones (in time
order) we have the testimony of British officers who suppressed
these practices still prevalent in some Indian princely states in
the 19th century.
See:
A. Parpola, "Human Sacrifices in India in Vedic Times and Before,"
in J.N. Bremmer (ed.), _The Strange World of Human Sacrifice_,
Leuven, Peeters, 2007.
Regards,
Francesco