ame 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