it is received custom, and hard to do away with, for priests are conservative.  Human sacrifice must have been peculiarly horrible from the fact that the sacrificer not only had to kill the man but to eat him, as is attested by the formal statement of the liturgical works.[48] But in the case of other animals (there are five sacrificial animals, of which man is first) we think it was a question of expense on the part of the laity.  When the soma became rare and expensive, substitutes were permitted and enjoined.  So with the great sacrifices.  The priests had built up a great complex of forms, where at every turn fees were demanded.  The whole expense, falling on the one individual to whose benefit accrued the sacrifice, must have been enormous; in the case of ordinary people impossible.  But the priests then permitted the sacrifice of substitutes, for their fees still remained; and even in the case of human sacrifice some such caution may have worked, for ordinarily it cost ‘one thousand cattle’ to buy a man to be sacrificed.  A proof of this lies in the fact that animal sacrifices were not forbidden at any time, only smaller (cheaper) animals took the place of cattle.  In the completed Brahmanic code the rule is that animals ought not to be killed except at sacrifice, and practically the smaller creatures were substituted for cattle, just as the latter had gradually taken the place of the old horse (and man) sacrifice.

If advancing civilization results in an agreeable change of morality in many regards, it is yet accompanied with wretched traits in others.  The whole silliness of superstition exceeds belief.  Because Bh[=a]llabheya once broke his arm on changing the metre of certain formulae, it is evident to the priest that it is wrong to trifle with received metres, and hence “let no one do this hereafter.”  There is a compensation on reading such trash in the thought that all this superstition has kept for us a carefully preserved text, but that is an accident of priestly foolishness, and the priest can be credited only with the folly.  Why is ‘horse-grass’ used in the sacrifice?  Because the sacrifice once ran away and “became a horse.”  Again one is thankful for the historical side-light on the horse-sacrifice; but the witlessness of the unconscious historian can but bring him into contempt.[49] Charms that are said against one are of course cast out by other charms.  If one is not prosperous with one name he takes another.  If the cart creaks at the sacrifice it is the voice of evil spirits; and a formula must avert the omen. Soma-husks are liable to turn into snakes; a formula must avert this catastrophe.  Everything done at the sacrifice is godly; ergo, everything human is to be done in an inhuman manner, and, since in human practice one cuts his left finger-nails first and combs the left side of the beard first, at the sacrifice he must cut nails and beard first on the other side, for “whatever is human at a sacrifice is useless” (vy[r.]ddhain v[=a]i tad yajnasya yad m[=a]nu[s.]am).  Of religious puns we have given instances already.  Agni says:  “prop me on the propper for that is proper” (hita), etc, etc.[50] One of these examples of depraved superstition is of a more dangerous nature.  The effect of the sacrifice is covert as well as overt.