Practices of Hindu

Hindu

Hindu refers to an identity associated with the philosophical, religious and cultural systems that are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent. As used in the Constitution of India, the word "Hindu" is also attributed to all persons professing any Indian religion...

 animal sacrifice

Animal sacrifice

Animal sacrifice is the ritual killing of an animal as part of a religion. It is practised by many religions as a means of appeasing a god or gods or changing the course of nature...

are mostly associated with Shaktism

Shaktism

Shaktism is a denomination of Hinduism that focuses worship upon Shakti or Devi – the Hindu Divine Mother – as the absolute, ultimate Godhead...

, and in currents of folk Hinduism strongly rooted in local tribal traditions. It is not practiced in contemporary Vedantic

Vedanta

Vedānta was originally a word used in Hindu philosophy as a synonym for that part of the Veda texts known also as the Upanishads. The name is a morphophonological form of Veda-anta = "Veda-end" = "the appendix to the Vedic hymns." It is also speculated that "Vedānta" means "the purpose or goal...

 or Brahminical Hinduism

Hinduism

Hinduism is the predominant and indigenous religious tradition of the Indian Subcontinent. Hinduism is known to its followers as , amongst many other expressions...

.

Terminology

A Sanskrit term used for animal sacrifice is bali, in origin meaning "tribute, offering or oblation" generically (“vegetable oblations [... and] animal oblations,”).
Bali among other things "refers to the blood of an animal" and is sometimes known as Jhatka

Jhatka

Jhatka or Chatka meat is meat from an animal which has been killed by a single strike of a sword or axe to sever the head, as opposed to Jewish slaughter or Islamic slaughter in which the animal is killed by ritually slicing the throat.-Jhatka meat and Sikhs:Jhatka for Sikhs is the...

 Bali in Hinduism.

The Kalika Purana distinguishes bali (sacrifice), mahabali (great sacrifice) and atibali (greatest sacrifice) for the ritual killing of goat

Goat

The domestic goat is a subspecies of goat domesticated from the wild goat of southwest Asia and Eastern Europe. The goat is a member of the Bovidae family and is closely related to the sheep as both are in the goat-antelope subfamily Caprinae. There are over three hundred distinct breeds of...

s, elephant

Elephant

Elephants are large land mammals in two extant genera of the family Elephantidae: Elephas and Loxodonta, with the third genus Mammuthus extinct...

s and humans

Human sacrifice

Human sacrifice is the act of killing one or more human beings as part of a religious ritual . Its typology closely parallels the various practices of ritual slaughter of animals and of religious sacrifice in general. Human sacrifice has been practised in various cultures throughout history...

, respectively, though the reference to humans in Shakti

Shakti

Shakti from Sanskrit shak - "to be able," meaning sacred force or empowerment, is the primordial cosmic energy and represents the dynamic forces that are thought to move through the entire universe in Hinduism. Shakti is the concept, or personification, of divine feminine creative power, sometimes...

 theology is symbolic and done in effigy

Effigy

An effigy is a representation of a person, especially in the form of sculpture or some other three-dimensional form.The term is usually associated with full-length figures of a deceased person depicted in stone or wood on church monuments. These most often lie supine with hands together in prayer,...

 in modern times. for instance, Sir John Woodroffe published a commentary on the Karpuradistotram where he writes that the sacrificial animals listed in verse 19 are merely symbols for the six enemies

Arishadvargas

In Hindu theology, Arishadvarga are the six passions of mind or desire: kama , krodha , lobh , moha , mada or ahankar and matsarya ; the negative characteristics of which prevent man from attaining moksha or salvation...

, with "man" representing pride.

The Vedic

Vedic Sanskrit

Vedic Sanskrit is an old Indo-Aryan language. It is an archaic form of Sanskrit, an early descendant of Proto-Indo-Iranian. It is closely related to Avestan, the oldest preserved Iranian language...

 term for "sacrificial victim, animal sacrifice" is medha (c.f. Ashvamedha

Ashvamedha

The Ashvamedha was one of the most important royal rituals of Vedic religion, described in detail in the Yajurveda...

).

Practice

During the Vedic period

Vedic period

The Vedic period was a period in history during which the Vedas, the oldest scriptures of Hinduism, were composed. The time span of the period is uncertain. Philological and linguistic evidence indicates that the Rigveda, the oldest of the Vedas, was composed roughly between 1700–1100 BCE, also...

, animal sacrifice was a "ubiquitous and extremely frequent occurrence which preceded almost any endeavor for which the outcome was uncertain."
Animal Sacrifice is practiced by majority of Hindu Castes in Southern state of Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu is one of the 28 states of India. Its capital and largest city is Chennai. Tamil Nadu lies in the southernmost part of the Indian Peninsula and is bordered by the union territory of Pondicherry, and the states of Kerala, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh...

. It is most notably done in front of Local Deities or Clan Deities.
Animal sacrifice is practiced in some Eastern states of India and Nepal

Nepal

Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...

.
It is also practiced by some Hindus on the Indonesia

Indonesia

Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...

n island of Bali

Bali

Bali is an Indonesian island located in the westernmost end of the Lesser Sunda Islands, lying between Java to the west and Lombok to the east...

. Kshatriya

Kshatriya

*For the Bollywood film of the same name see Kshatriya Kshatriya or Kashtriya, meaning warrior, is one of the four varnas in Hinduism...

s practice this too.

It is a ritual that is practised today and is mentioned in Medieval Hinduism too.
Adherents of the Sakta sect off Hinduism hold this to be a central tenet of their belief.

Ritual

The ritual slaughter

Ritual slaughter

Ritual slaughter is the practice of slaughtering livestock for meat in a ritual manner. Ritual slaughter involves a prescribed method of slaughtering an animal for food production purposes...

 normally forms part of a festival to honor a Hindu God. For example, in Nepal the Hindu goddess Gadhimai

Gadhimai

Gadhimai is the name of one of the Hindu goddesses of power, though the term usually refers to the world's biggest animal sacrifice conducted at the Gadhimai temple area in central Terai of Nepal....

, is honoured every 5 years with the slaughter of 250,000 animals. Bali sacrifice today is common at the Sakta shrines of the Goddess Kali

Kali

' , also known as ' , is the Hindu goddess associated with power, shakti. The name Kali comes from kāla, which means black, time, death, lord of death, Shiva. Kali means "the black one". Since Shiva is called Kāla - the eternal time, Kālī, his consort, also means "Time" or "Death" . Hence, Kāli is...

. Sunil Sehgal says that "this rite is almost the sole survival of animal sacrifice in modern brahminical Hinduism".

Method of Sacrifice

Methods for sacrificing range from decapitation, strangulation, to a spike being driven into the heart of the animal.

Jhatka

Jhatka

Jhatka or Chatka meat is meat from an animal which has been killed by a single strike of a sword or axe to sever the head, as opposed to Jewish slaughter or Islamic slaughter in which the animal is killed by ritually slicing the throat.-Jhatka meat and Sikhs:Jhatka for Sikhs is the...

 is the proscribed method for Hindu ritual slaughter

Ritual slaughter

Ritual slaughter is the practice of slaughtering livestock for meat in a ritual manner. Ritual slaughter involves a prescribed method of slaughtering an animal for food production purposes...

, however other methods such as strangulation and the use of a wooden spile (sphya) driven into the heart is used. The reason for this is priests see an animal making a noise as a bad omen. The Jhatka method requires the instant killing of the animal in a single decapitating

Decapitation

Decapitation is the separation of the head from the body. Beheading typically refers to the act of intentional decapitation, e.g., as a means of murder or execution; it may be accomplished, for example, with an axe, sword, knife, wire, or by other more sophisticated means such as a guillotine...

blow with an axe or sword. Those Hindus who do eat meat prescribe meat killed by the Jhatka method.