M. Reinach points out that the Passover of the Israelites was in
its origin a similar sacrifice. A lamb or kid, the first-fruit of
the flocks, was eaten entire without the bones being broken, the
blood smeared on the doorway being an offering to the god. The story
connecting this sacrifice with the death of the first-born in Egypt
was of later origin, devised to account for it when the real meaning
had been forgotten. [372] The name Rachel [373] means a ewe, and it
would appear that the children of Israel in the pastoral stage had the
sheep for their totem deity and supposed themselves to be descended
from it, as the Jats consider themselves to be descended from Siva,
probably in his form of Mahadeo, the deified bull. As held in Canaan,
the festival may have been a relic of the former migratory life of
the Israelites when they tended flocks and regarded the sheep, or
goat, as their most important domestic animal. It may have been in
memory of this wandering life that the festival was accompanied by
the eating of unleavened bread, and the sacrifice was consumed with
loins girded up and staffs in their hands, as if in readiness for
a journey. The Banjaras retain in their marriage and other customs
various reminiscences of their former migratory life, as shown in the
article on that caste. The Gadarias of the Central Provinces worship
a goddess called Dishai Devi, who is represented by a stone platform
just outside the sheep-pen. She has thus probably developed from the
deified sheep or goat, which itself was formerly worshipped. On the
eighth day of the fasts in Chait and Kunwar the Gadarias offer the
goddess a virgin she-goat. They wash the goat's feet in water and rub
turmeric on its feet and head. It is given rice to eat and brought
before the goddess, and water is poured over its body; when the goat
begins to shiver they think that the goddess has accepted the offering,
and cut its throat with a sickle or knife. Then the animal is roasted
whole and eaten in the veranda of the house, nothing being thrown
away but the bones. Only men may join in this sacrifice, and not women.