Another hymn of this character concludes:
In heaven, where our righteous friends are blessed, Having cast off diseases from their bodies, From lameness free and not deformed in members, There may we see our parents and our children.
[136] _A History of Sanskrit Literature_, Professor Macdonell, p. 199.
While the tribes were spreading southward and eastward, Madhyadesa, the “middle country”, remained the centre of Brahmanic culture. In that district came into existence the earliest sacred prose works which constitute the basis of classic Hinduism. The first were the oldest _Brahmanas_; these comment on and expound the doctrines of the Vedic hymns, especially in their relation to the ritual of sacrifices. To the _Brahmanas_ were added the _Aran´yakas_, “forest books”, which are more speculative in tendency. The expository appendices to the _Aran´yakas_ are called the _Upanishads_, “the sittings down”, or “the sessions”—the pupil sat at his master's feet—and in these a high level of thought is attained. “For the first time”, says Professor Macdonell, “we find the Absolute grasped and proclaimed.”
All the tribes were not infused with the same degree of culture. In the _Yajur-veda_ period there were various schools of thought, and these continued to exercise their influence into historic times, even after Upanishadic doctrines became widespread.
Ere we deal, however, with the new theological doctrines of the Brahmanic teachers, we should follow the development of sacrificial practices, because from these evolved the bold Pantheism which characterized the conception of the World Soul, Brahmă.
The two greatest sacrifices were the _purusha-medha_, the human sacrifice, and _aswa-medha_, the sacrifice of the horse. Both were prevalent in early times, and in simpler form than they survive to us in the doctrinal works and the Epics. A human sacrifice was believed to be of highest potency, but it became extremely rare, as in Egypt, among the ruling and cultured classes. It was perpetuated in India, however, until about half a century ago, by the Dravidian Khonds in Bengal and Madras, and had to be suppressed by British officers. Human sacrifices, in historic times, were “offered to the earth goddess, Tari Pennu or Bera Pennu, and were believed to ensure good crops, and immunity from all diseases and accidents”. One official record states that the victim, after being stabbed by the priest, was “literally cut to pieces”. Each person who was “so fortunate as to procure it carried away a morsel of the flesh, and presented it to the idol of his own village”.[137]