Three Hour Breakfast

So why does the Veda claim that the top social stratum consists not of warrior-kings stronger than all other humans, “eating” them all, but of the caste of priests? It is here that the code’s ideological ingenuity becomes apparent: the function of the priests is to prevent the first, highest, level of cosmic eating, the eating of human mortals by gods. How? By way of performing sacrificial rituals. Gods must be appeased, their hunger for blood must be satisfied, and the trick of the priests is to offer the gods a substitute (symbolic) sacrifice: an animal or other prescribed food instead of human life. The sacrifice is needed not to secure any special favors from the gods, but to make sure that the wheel of life goes on turning. Priests perform a function which concerns the balance of the entire universe: if the gods remain hungry, the whole cycle of cosmic life is disturbed. From the very beginning, the “holistic” notion of the great chain of Being — the reality of which is the brutal chain of the strong eating the weak — is thus based on a deception; it is not a “natural” chain, but a chain based on an exception (humans don’t want to be eaten).