following the ancient Vedic rites, never eat meat except that of a sacrificed victim,[1] The use of the sacred rice of Jagannāth by the Kandhs seem to be sacramental. But sacrifice in India usually takes the form of a gift to the god, for which in return material benefits are expected, and the evidence for the existence of the communal type is not quite convincing.
The latest and most objectionable phase of Mother worship is Saktism, the worship of the active female principle (prakriti), as manifested in the goddesses, consorts of Siva.[2]
The account of Mother worship here given is merely a sketch of an extremely complex subject, regarding which our knowledge is still defective. Much has been done to elucidate it by Bishop Whitehead, Mr. F. J. Richards, and other writers, principally for southern India. It may be hoped that the outlines which I have given will stimulate further inquiry, and provide further information which may throw much-needed light on the special developments of the cultus in Crete, Early Greece, and Western Asia.
- ↑ Vishnu Parāna iii. 11, trans. H. H. Wilson, 1840, p. 307; Manu, Laws, v. 7; Bombay Gazetteer, xviii. 51; Thurston, op. cit. v. 235; E. W. Hopkins, op. cit. 185 note, 288 note. “In the Vedic texts no Kshatriya can eat of the sacrificial offering (Ailareya Brāhmana, vii. 26), no doubt because only the Brāhmanas were sufficiently holy to receive the divine essence of the sacrifice into which, by partaking of it, the deity has entered in part” (A. A. Macdonell, A. B. Keith, Vedic Index, i. 112, ii. 83, 145).
- ↑ N. Macnicol, Indian Theism from the Vedic to the Muhammadan Period, 180 et seqq.: Hopkins, op. cit. 489 et seqq.; A. Avalon, Tantra of the Great Liberation, Hymns to the Goddess, Principles of Tantra.
