But this, the terrible barbaric side of religious worship, is now distinctly yielding to a more humane religion.  The ’barley ewe’[44] is taking the place of a bloodier offering.  It has been urged that the humanity[45] and the accompanying silliness of the Brahmanic period as compared with the more robust character of the earlier age are due to the weakening and softening effects of the climate.  But we doubt whether the climate of the Punj[=a]b differs as much from that of Delhi and Patna as does the character of the Rig Veda from that of the Br[=a]hmanas.  We shall protest again when we come to the subject of Buddhism against the too great influence which has been claimed for climate.  Politics and society, in our opinion, had more to do with altering the religions of India than had a higher temperature and miasma.  As a result of ease and sloth—­for the Brahmans are now the divine pampered servants of established kings, not the energetic peers of a changing population of warriors—­the priests had lost the inspiration that came from action; they now made no new hymns; they only formulated new rules of sacrifice.  They became intellectually debauched and altogether weakened in character.  Synchronous with this universal degradation and lack of fibre, is found the occasional substitution of barley and rice sacrifices for those of blood; and it may be that a sort of selfish charity was at work here, and the priest saved the beast to spare himself.  But there is no very early evidence of a humane view of sacrifice influencing the priests.

The Brahman is no Jain.  One must read far to hear a note of the approaching ahims[=a] doctrine of ‘non-injury.’  At most one finds a contemptuous allusion, as in a pitying strain, to the poor plants and animals that follow after man in reaping some sacrificial benefit from a ceremony.[46] It does not seem to us that a recognized respect for animal life or kindness to dumb creatures lies at the root of proxy sacrifice, though it doubtless came in play.  But still less does it appear probable that, as is often said, aversion to beast-sacrifice is due to the doctrine of karma, and re-birth in animal form.  The karma notion begins to appear in the Brahmanas, but not in the sams[=a]ra shape of transmigration.  It was surely not because the Hindu was afraid of eating his deceased grandmother that he first abstained from meat.  For, long after the doctrine of karma and sams[=a]ra[47] is established, animal sacrifices are not only permitted but enjoined; and the epic characters shoot deer and even eat cows.  We think, in short, that the change began as a sumptuary measure only.  In the case of human sacrifice there is doubtless a civilized repugnance to the act, which is clearly seen in many passages where the slaughter of man is made purely symbolical.  The only wonder is that it should have obtained so long after the age of the Rig Veda.  But like the stone knife of sacrifice among the Romans