Sacrifices gone wrong: Precautions, consequences, damage control

Abstract

In many cultures, sacrifices are such an important aspect of the social life, that their ratio has been widely scrutinized and subjected to innumerable theories. In my paper I will tackle the problem from the viewpoint of the possible failure of the ritual. All human actions can go wrong, of course, but the failure of a sacrifice can be so dangerous that the rules of its performance constitute no less than an entire science; in ancient Vedic religion, in particular, the sheer amount of texts concerning the exact circumstances, modalities, instruments etc. which must be considered before undertaking the ritual is evidence of the seriousness of the issue and of the fear that something might go wrong. We find very similar concerns in ancient Greek and Latin documents, which confirm that in sacrificial cultures, in spite of their deep differences, the components of the ritual have to be carefully handled in order to avoid catastrophic consequences. In animal sacrifice, of course, a considerable part of the precautions regard how the victims must be handled and killed. As many indologists have argued, it is possible that the notion of ahiṃsā itself arises within this context, as a way of ensuring that, by not "really" harming the animal, its immolation will cause no harm to the sacrificer and, more generally, to the community. My paper will deal respectively with: 1) the precautions to be taken beforehand; 2) the imagined consequences of a failure; 3) the means through which these consequences can be "fixed". The analysis might give some insights about the way in which the Indian sacrificial religion has shaped the relationship between humans and animals, which is, in its turn, a relevant part of the ethical assumptions operating in that part of the world.