Vedic ritual includes the sacrifice of animals, and there are indications of the former prevalence of human sacrifice.  At the time when the Brahmanas were composed the human victims were released alive, but afterwards the practice of real sacrifice was revived, probably owing to the continual incorporation into the Hindu community of semi-barbarous tribes and their savage deities.  Human victims were offered to Mahadevi the spouse of Siva until the last century, and would doubtless be offered now, were legal restrictions removed.  But though the sporadic survival of an old custom in its most primitive and barbarous form is characteristic of Hinduism, the whole tendency of thought and practice since the rise of Buddhism has been adverse to religious bloodshed, even of animals.  The doctrine of substitution and atonement, of offering the victim on behalf of the sacrificer, though not absent, plays a smaller part than in the religions of Western Asia.

Evidently it was not congenial:  the Hindu has always been inclined to think that the individual earns his future in another world by his own thoughts and acts.  Even the value of the victim is less important than the correct performance of the ceremony.  The teaching of the Brahmanas is not so much that a good heart is better than lavish alms as that the ritually correct sacrifice of a cake is better than a hecatomb not offered according to rule.

The offerings required by the Vedic ritual are very varied.  The simplest are cakes and libations of melted butter poured on the fire from two wooden spoons held one over the other while Vedic verses are recited.  Besides these there was the animal sacrifice, and still more important the Soma[160] sacrifice.  This ceremony is very ancient and goes back to the time when the Hindus and Iranians were not divided.  In India the sacrifice lasted at least five days and, even in its simpler forms, was far more complicated than any ceremony known to the Greeks, Romans or Jews.  Only professional priests could perform it and as a rule a priest did not attempt to master more than one branch and to be for instance either a reciter (Hotri) or singer (Udgatri).  But the five-day sacrifices are little more than the rudiments of the sacrificial art and lead on to the Ahinas or sacrifices comprising from two to twelve days of Soma pressing which last not more than a month.  The Ahinas again can be combined into sacrificial sessions lasting a year or more[161], and it would seem that rites of this length were really performed, though when we read of such sessions extending over a hundred years, we may hope that they are creations of a fancy like that of the hymn-writer who celebrated the state

Where congregations ne’er break up And Sabbaths never end.