Muhammadans however cannot eat the flesh of an animal unless its throat
is cut and the blood allowed to flow before it dies. At the time of
cutting the throat a sacred text or invocation must be repeated. It
has been seen that in former times the blood of the animal was offered
to the god and scattered on the altar or collected in a pit at its
foot. It may be suggested that the method of killing which still
survives was that formerly practised in offering the sacrifice,
and that the necessity of allowing the blood to flow is a relic of
the blood offering. When it no longer became necessary to sacrifice
every animal at a shrine the sacrificial method of slaughter and the
invocation to the god might be retained as removing the impiety of
the act. At present it is said that unless an animal's blood flows it
is a murda or corpse, and hence not suitable for food. But this idea
may have grown up to account for the custom when its original meaning
had been forgotten. The Gonds, when sacrificing a fowl, hold it over
the sacred post or stone, which represents the god, and let the blood
drop upon it. And when sacrificing a pig they first cut its tongue
and let the blood fall upon the symbol of the god. In Chhattisgarh,
when a Hindu is ill he makes a vow of the affected limb to the god;
then on recovering he goes to the temple, and cutting this limb, lets
the blood fall on to the symbol of the god as an offering. Similarly
the Sikhs are forbidden to eat flesh unless the animal has been killed
by jatka or cutting off the head with one stroke, and the same rule
is observed by some of the lower Hindu castes. In Hindu sacrifices
it is often customary that the head of the animal should be made over
to the officiating priest as his share, and so in killing the animal
he would naturally cut off its head. The above rule may therefore be
of the same character as the rite of halal among the Muhammadans, and
here also the sacrificial method of killing an animal may be retained
to legalise its slaughter after the sacrifice itself has fallen into
desuetude. In Berar some time ago the Mullah or Muhammadan priest
was a village servant and the Hindus paid him dues. In return he was
accustomed to kill the goats and sheep which they wished to sacrifice
at temples, or in their fields to propitiate the deities presiding over
them. He also killed animals for the Khatik or mutton-butcher and the
latter exposed them for sale. The Mullah was entitled to the heart of
the animal killed as his perquisite and a fee of two pice. Some of the
Marathas were unmindful of the ceremony, but in general they professed
not to eat flesh unless the sacred verse had been pronounced either by
the Mullah or some Muhammadan capable of rendering it halal or lawful
to be eaten. [384] Hence it would appear that the Hindus, unprovided
by their own religion with any sacrificial mode of legalising the
slaughter of animals, adopted the ritual of a foreign faith in order
to make animal sacrifices acceptable to their own deities. The belief
that it is sinful to kill a domestic animal except with some religious
sanction is thus clearly shown in full force.