Note 239 — PART I. THE ETHICS OF BRAHMANISM—A CLASS MORALITY

This Brahmanic notion of sacrifice, that the gods need food, is the underlying notion in all religions of which sacrifices form a part. “That the purpose of sacrifice was simply to feed the gods was admitted on all sides in the controversy which accompanied the diffusion of Christianity in the ancient world.... The altar, in the words of Dean Spenser, was merely the table on which food and drink were set before the languishing deity” (Payne, History of the New World called America (1892), vol. i, pp. xi f.). “It is on precisely the same principle that the Mexicans kept their great war-gods ... alive and vigorous by the blood of young human victims selected from their tributaries, and the Peruvians maintained the Creator, Sun, Moon, and Thunder, on whose favor their crops depended, in youth and vigor by the continual smoke of burnt llamas” (Ibid. vol. i, p. 484). Consult also Frazer, Adonis, Attis, and Osiris. All these were divinities of vegetation, which were believed to die and to come to life again, as with the revolution of the seasons vegetation died and was renewed. Along with this belief went the notion that by magical ceremonies the worshipers of the gods could aid them in recovering their wasted energies.