「女神には血が必要だ」

Olivia Lang “Hindu sacrifice of 250,000 animals begins” http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/24/hindu-sacrifice-gadhimai-festival-nepal


このところ『ガーディアン』の記事をチェックするのを怠っていたのだが。11月24日付けの記事。
印度国境に近いネパールのBariyapurにおけるGadhimai祭り。5年毎に開かれるこの祭りは、一挙に25万頭の水牛(buffalo)を初めとする動物を、女神Gadhimaiに献げるために屠る「世界最大の動物供犠」として知られている。今年の祭りでは、動物供犠は残酷だとする反対派が寺の近くで、ココナッツを「象徴的供犠」として割る抗議活動を行った。仏蘭西の女優ブリジット・バルドーはネパール政府に対して、動物供犠の禁止を要請していたが、ネパール政府はこの祭りに助成金を支出している*1。しかし、反対運動の中心となっているのは、印度やネパールのヒンドゥー教徒仏教徒ジャイナ教徒である*2
屠られた動物はどうなるのかといえば――


The dead beasts will be sold to companies who will profit from the sale of the meat, bones and hide. Organisers will funnel the proceeds into development of the area, including the temple upkeep.
ということだ。
Dev Chaudharyというヒンドゥー僧は「女神には血が必要だ」という。これほどまでの生贄を要求するGadhimaiってどんな神様なのだろうと思うが、記事には” a Hindu goddess of power”としか書いていない。また、Wikipediaの” Gadhimai”の項目でも記述は殆ど全てこの祭りのことに費やされている*3

さて、11月25日には、Anil Bhanot氏が”The Gadhimai sacrifice is grotesque”という文章を寄稿している*4。その中で、彼はこの祭りの起源について言及している;


Yesterday, Mangal Chaudhary and Dukha Kachadiya, descendants of a feudal landlord and a village healer adept in the Hindu occult, who in the 18th century started a mass animal sacrifice to the goddess Gadhimai, presided over a ceremony to begin this year's festival by beheading 10,000 buffalo. Their deaths are being followed by the slaughter of a further quarter of a million animals and birds today. It is all happening in Bariyarpur, a village in the south of Nepal, bordering the state of Bihar in India. The region is well known as the homeland of the Bhojpuri people, a close-knit ethnic community devoted to the worship of Gadhimai.


The history of this bloodthirsty event began when Bhagwan Chaudhary, the feudal landlord, a imprisoned in Makwanpur fort prison about 260 years ago. He dreamed that all his problems would be solved if he made a blood sacrifice to Gadhimai. Immediately upon his release from prison he took counsel from the local village healer whose descendant, Dukha Kachadiya, started the ritual yesterday with drops of his own blood from five parts of his body. Apparently then a light "appeared" in an earthenware jar, and the gory sacrifice began.

この祭りはその辺り一帯の「封建地主」と「呪医」の子孫によって「主宰」されていること。また、Gadhimaiという神様はBhojpuriという少数民族と関係が深いことになる。
Anil Bhanot氏の意見は、

Personally, I see this practice as one utterly opposed to the non-violent principles of my Hindu religion. Five to six thousand years ago our Vedic seers recognised that we can only survive by taking life from a lower level of consciousness to ours as is the case with plants and animals, but never did they condone senseless and purposeless killing. In Hinduism all life is sacred and the whole idea of animal sacrifice in those ancient days was based on the principle that we must pray to God before killing an animal for food – by reciting Vedic mantras to God – and simply put that we think twice before taking a life for our own consumption.