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Animal sacrifice is practiced in the states of Assam, Odisha, Jharkhand, West Bengal and Tripura in Eastern India, as well as in the nation of Nepal. The sacrifice involves slaying of goats, chickens, pigeons and male Water buffaloes. [27] For example, one of the largest animal sacrifice in Nepal occurs over the three-day-long Gadhimai festival.
In the Bible, a scapegoat is one of a pair of kid goats that is released into the wilderness, taking with it all sins and impurities, while the other is sacrificed. The concept first appears in the Book of Leviticus , in which a goat is designated to be cast into the desert to carry away the sins of the community.
Animal sacrifice was general among the ancient Near Eastern civilizations of Ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt and Persia, as well as the Hebrews (covered below).Unlike the Greeks, who had worked out a justification for keeping the best edible parts of the sacrifice for the assembled humans to eat, in these cultures the whole animal was normally placed on the fire by the altar and burned, or ...
''Offering to Molech'' in Bible Pictures and What They Teach Us, by Charles Foster, 1897.The drawing is a typical depiction of child sacrifice. Child sacrifice is the ritualistic killing of children in order to please or appease a deity, supernatural beings, or sacred social order, tribal, group or national loyalties in order to achieve a desired result.
This type of worship has sometimes been said to have originated from the goat's increased sex drive. One male goat was capable of fertilizing 150 females. [37] The Greek god Pan was depicted as having goat characteristics, such as hooves, horns, and a beard. Along with Pan, the goat was closely related to Dionysus during the Roman era. [37]
Ancient Phoenicia saw "a special sacrifice at the season of the harvest, to reawaken the spirit of the vine"; while the winter fertility rite to restore "the spirit of the withering vine" included as sacrifice "cooking a kid in the milk of its mother, a Canaanite custom which Mosaic law condemned and formally forbade".
At the Lupercal altar, a male goat (or goats) and a dog were sacrificed by one or another of the Luperci, under the supervision of the Flamen dialis, Jupiter's chief priest. [b] An offering was also made of salted mealcakes, prepared by the Vestal Virgins. [14] [failed verification] After the blood sacrifice, two Luperci approached
The Phoenicians of Carthage were reputed to practise child sacrifice, and though the scale of sacrifices may have been exaggerated by ancient authors for political or religious reasons, there is archaeological evidence of large numbers of children's skeletons buried in association with sacrificial animals.