re to see how vast are
the proportions assumed by ritual in India. Our information about the
political institutions, the wars and chronology of ancient Greece is
full, but of the details of Greek worship we hear little and probably
there was not much to tell. But in India, where there are no histories
and no dates, we know every prayer and gesture of the officiants
throughout complicated sacrifices and possess a whole library describing
their correct performance.

In most respects these sacrifices which absorbed so much intellect and
energy belong to ancient history. They must not be confounded with the
ceremonies performed in modern temples, which have a different origin
and character. A great blow was struck at the sacrificial system by
Buddhism. Not only did it withdraw the support of many kings and nobles
(and the greater ceremonies being very costly depended largely on the
patronage of the wealthy), but it popularized the idea that animal
sacrifices are shocking and that attempts to win salvation by offerings
are crude and unphilosophic. But though, after Buddhism had leavened
India for a few centuries, we no longer find the religious world given
over to sacrificing as it had been about 600 B.C., these rites did not
die out. Even now they are occasionally performed in South India and the
Deccan. There are still many Brahmans in these regions who, if they have
not the means or learning to perform the greater Vedic ceremonies, at
any rate sympathize with the mental attitude which they imply, and this
attitude has many curious features.

The rite of sacrifice, which in the simple form of an offering supposed
to be agreeable to the deity is the principal ceremony in the early
stages of most religions, persists in their later stages but gives rise
to clouds of theory and mystical interpretations. Thus in Christianity,
the Jewish sacrifices are regarded as prototypes of the death of Christ
and that death itself as a sacrifice to the Almighty, an offering of
himself to himself, which in some way acts as an expiation for the sins
of the world. And by a further development the sacrifice of the mass,
that is, the offering of portions of bread and wine which are held to be
miraculously transformed into the body and blood of Christ by the
manipulations of a qualified priest, is believed to repeat every day the
tragedy of Calvary. The prevalence of this view in Europe should make us
chary of stigmatizing Hindu ideas about sacr