deeds through suffering, in many cases
by being born as a particular type of
animal thousands of consecutive times.
Unlike the Jains, who see all matter
(even stones) as possessing souls, most
Hindus would consider this possible
only for sentient, or fully aware, beings,
including animal life. The conviction
that animals have souls is one of the rea-
sons why many Hindus are vegetarian,
since this diet does the least harm to
other living things.
For Hindus, the animal realm is con-
sidered a place of punishment. From a
karmic perspective, being born as an
animal is an unenviable state, since ani-
mal behavior is run entirely by instinct,
and thus as animals they can make no
conscious effort to better themselves.
From a more concrete perspective, ani-
mals in India often lead very difficult
lives—including, in many cases, the
“sacred” cow.
As with all other unfavorable karmic
states, one’s animal life will eventually
end, but only after one’s sins have been
fully expiated. This suffering and lack of
control over one’s destiny makes birth as
an animal a state to be avoided.
Animal Sacrifice
The practice of animal sacrifice can be
found in two different strands of the
Hindu tradition. The first, and by far the
earliest, is in the cult of sacrifice described
in the later strata of the Vedas, particularly
in the Brahmanaliterature. The cost of
these rites virtually ensured that they
could only be performed by royalty and
nobility, since some entailed the slaughter
of hundreds of animals.
Perhaps the most famous of these rites
was the horse sacrifice (ashvamedha),
which served to prove a king’s great power.
In the early centuries before the common
era, these sacrifices grew less frequent—a
trend often connected to the stress on
ahimsaby the Buddhists and Jains, two
groups that opposed the slaughter of any
life—and by the early centuries of the
common era, even Hindu commentators
denounced the Vedic sacrifices because
they entailed animal slaughter. In modern
times, these rites have largely fallen into
disuse, and even when they have been
revived and re-created, they usually do not
involve animal slaughter but substitutions
of some sort, such as vegetables or fruits.
The other context in which animal sac-
rifice can be found, and is still performed
quite regularly, is in the worshipof village
deities, or certain powerful and terrifying
forms of the Goddess. In this worship the
animals (usually goats) are decapitated,
and the bloodis offered to the deity, often
by smearing some of it on a post outside of
the temple.
In Hindu culture, blood is considered
a “hot” substance—highly impure,
extremely powerful, and readily contami-
nating other things. Any deity that
requires sacrifice is also “hot”—powerful
enough to grant favors to their devotees
(bhakta), but also marginal, potentially
dangerous, and requiring frequent animal
sacrifice to maintain their power.
The most extreme example is at the
temple of the goddess Kamakhya in
modern Assam, a region located in
northeastern India. This is one of the few
reported instances of human sacrifice,
although the custom was halted by the
British in 1832. When Kamakhya’s present
temple was consecrated in 1565, she was
supposedly offered the heads of 140 men,
all of whom had volunteered themselves
as offerings.
Although such blood-drinking deities
are often very powerful, many Hindus do
not approve of the impurity (ashaucha)
and slaughter connected with animal sac-
rifice. For this reason, one of the first ways
to make a particular deity acceptable to a
more cultured public is often to make the
sacrifices vegetarian, by substituting a
gourd or cucumber in place of the sacrifi-
cial animal.Aniruddha
(“unobstructed”) In Hindu mythology,
the sonof Pradyumnaand the grand-
son of Krishna.Aniruddha