School of Suspicion

Category: Sacrifice and Substitution

Someone stands in for someone else. The ram caught in the thicket, a king cutting his own flesh to outweigh a bird on the scale, the brother killed in a field and the son given afterwards in his place. These articles follow the substitution wherever the stories take it.

  • Vṛkāsura — Flesh for Power

    Vṛkāsura — Flesh for Power

    An asura named Wolf cuts the flesh from his own body to win a boon from Shiva, asks for a hand that kills whatever head it touches, and tries it first on the god. Vishnu saves Shiva with a lie. Read beside Simon’s offer to buy the laying on of hands, Ovid’s Midas, the devil’s…

  • Ra — Blood, Beer, and Rebirth

    Ra — Blood, Beer, and Rebirth

    Ra sends his Eye against the humans who plot against him, then floods the fields with beer dyed red to stop the slaughter he ordered. Creation, rebellion, substitution, and a sun that has to be reborn every night.

  • King Shibi (Sanskrit: शिबि), the dove, the hunter, and the sacrificial king

    In the Hindu Mahabharata, a king called Ushinara was famous for his righteous reign. The Hindu Gods tested the reputation of his son the next king. The story below is told in the Mahabharata, Vana Parva, in the section on the pilgrimage to the sacred fords (Tirtha-yatra Parva, chapters 130–131). The passages set as block…