In all religions of the world which maintain sacrificial rituals and in which the portion offered to Gods is given to fire, that portion is normally offered raw except in Vedic India, where its previous cooking is necessary.

"Sacred Sacrifice" examines how analogous mythological ideas and the experience of sacred presence during the ritual act created similar ritual paradigms in two non-contiguous cultures. Vedic fire sacrifice, the Horse sacrifice in ancient India and the sacrificial development of the Christian Eucharist serve as examples. This book takes to task theories on sacrifice and ritual that emphasize the psycho-social and functionalist interpretation to the exclusion of the religious. The relationship between myth and ritual, and conscious and unconscious human behavior emerges from this analysis of universal religious structures.

This Book Deals With Post-Vedic Developments In Under-Standing The Concept Of Sacrifice (Yajna) And The Response Of The Bhagavad Gita To It. The Book Argues That The Upanishads Present Vedic Ritual Notions Together With The New Teachings Of The Wandering Renouncers (Sramanas) Who Posed A Formidable Challenge To The Ritual Tradition And Its Social Hierarchy.

In this book, J. C. Heesterman attempts to understand the origins and nature of Vedic sacrifice—the complex compound of ritual practices that stood at the center of ancient Indian religion. Paying close attention to anomalous elements within both the Vedic ritual texts, the brahmanas, and the ritual manuals, the srautasutras, Heesterman reconstructs the ideal sacrifice as consisting of four moments: killing, destruction, feasting, and contest. He shows that Vedic sacrifice all but exclusively stressed the offering in the fire—the element of destruction—at the expense of the other elements. Notably, the contest was radically eliminated. At the same time sacrifice was withdrawn from society to become the sole concern of the individual sacrificer. The ritual turns in on the individual as "self-sacrificer" who realizes through the internalized knowledge of the ritual the immortal Self. At this point the sacrificial cult of the fire recedes behind doctrine of the atman's transcendence and unity with the cosmic principle, the brahman. Based on his intensive analysis Heesterman argues that Vedic sacrifice was primarily concerned with the broken world of the warrior and sacrificer. This world, already broken in itself by the violence of the sacrificial contest, was definitively broken up and replaced with the ritrualism of the single, unopposed sacrificer. However, the basic problem of sacrifice—the riddle of life and death—keeps breaking too surface in the form of incongruities, contradictions, tensions, and oppositions that have perplexed both the ancient ritual theorists and the modern scholar.

This book describes the ASVAMEDHA rite and its symbolism to explain distinctive aspects of the Vedic sacrifice system. Several questions related to the Asvamedha are posed and answered in the context of Vedic epistemology. This rite has three important functions: (i) it presents and equivalence of the naksatra year to the heaven, implying that it is rite that celebrates the rebirth of the Sun; (ii) it is symbolic of the conquest of Time by the king, in whose name the rite is performed; and (iii) it is celebration of social harmony achieved by the transcendence of the fundamental conflicts between various sources of power. Numbers from another Vedic rite, the Agnicayana; help in the understanding of several of its details.

In Sacrifice, René Girard interrogates the Brahmanas of Vedic India, exploring coincidences with mimetic theory that are too numerous and striking to be accidental. Even that which appears to be dissimilar fails to contradict mimetic theory, but instead corresponds to the minimum of illusion without which sacrifice becomes impossible. The Bible reveals collective violence, similar to that which generates sacrifice everywhere, but instead of making victims guilty, the Bible and the Gospels reveal the persecutors of a single victim. Instead of elaborating myths, they tell the truth absolutely contrary to the archaic sense. Once exposed, the single victim mechanism can no longer function as the model for would-be sacrificers. Recognizing that the Vedic tradition also converges on a revelation that discredits sacrifice, mimetic theory locates within sacrifice itself a paradoxical power of quiet reflection that leads, in the long run, to the eclipse of this institution which is violent but nevertheless fundamental to the development of human culture. Far from unduly privileging the Western tradition and awarding it a monopoly on the knowledge and repudiation of blood sacrifice, mimetic analysis recognizes comparable, but never truly identical, traits in the Vedic tradition.

In this book, J. C. Heesterman attempts to understand the origins and nature of Vedic sacrifice—the complex compound of ritual practices that stood at the center of ancient Indian religion. Paying close attention to anomalous elements within both the Vedic ritual texts, the brahmanas, and the ritual manuals, the srautasutras, Heesterman reconstructs the ideal sacrifice as consisting of four moments: killing, destruction, feasting, and contest. He shows that Vedic sacrifice all but exclusively stressed the offering in the fire—the element of destruction—at the expense of the other elements. Notably, the contest was radically eliminated. At the same time sacrifice was withdrawn from society to become the sole concern of the individual sacrificer. The ritual turns in on the individual as "self-sacrificer" who realizes through the internalized knowledge of the ritual the immortal Self. At this point the sacrificial cult of the fire recedes behind doctrine of the atman's transcendence and unity with the cosmic principle, the brahman. Based on his intensive analysis Heesterman argues that Vedic sacrifice was primarily concerned with the broken world of the warrior and sacrificer. This world, already broken in itself by the violence of the sacrificial contest, was definitively broken up and replaced with the ritrualism of the single, unopposed sacrificer. However, the basic problem of sacrifice—the riddle of life and death—keeps breaking too surface in the form of incongruities, contradictions, tensions, and oppositions that have perplexed both the ancient ritual theorists and the modern scholar.