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ings. Since one’s actions were of cosmic import, it is understandable that non-violent action would eventually emerge. In addition, the increasing importance of private spiritual practice and individual experience in the pursuit of brahman and the liberation from death and rebirth that it would bring, made the physical world-maintenance of the sacrificial system less necessary. For the forest-dwelling authors of the Upanisads, life did not depend on social solidarity maintained within the material world. Life depended on the very essence of reality, the absolute nature of being, brahman.

Recognizing the Victim: Unraveling the Sacrificial System

For the groups of forest-dwelling people who wrote the Upanisads, the sacrificial system was no longer an acceptable way of life. This is not to say that the Upanisads completely upset the Vedic world that relied on the sacrifice. They did not. Vedic sacrifice was still the norm in mainstream society for quite some time and remnants of it still remain in modern Hinduism today. Nonetheless, for those individuals who felt compelled to follow the path towards brahman and ultimate liberation, sacrifice was not a necessary part of their lives or communities.

Rene Girard and Gil Bailie argue that cultures are founded on collective, sacred violence. It is only by choosing a scapegoat and allowing ritualized violence to be taken out on that individual that people come together and form cohesive social communities. Bailie argues that “cultures have forever commemorated some form of sacred violence at their origins and considered it a sacred duty to reenact it in times of crisis.” [34] This analysis is quite accurate when assessing the function of sacrifice in Vedic society. The sacrifice was the maintaining mechanism of the natural and social orders.

The question that naturally arises, then, is why certain groups of people became dissatisfied with the sacrificial system (even though it was believed to still produce material results) and felt that it was necessary to move beyond it in a search for deeper truth and meaning. Bailie argues that the only insight that has allowed human beings to denounce the violence of the sacrificial system is the recognition of the victim. Once we see that the victim is an innocent who has become a scapegoat for the larger community, we can no longer condone the use of violence to maintain social solidarity.

Bailie argues that the “New Testament account of the crucifixion reproduces the myths and mechanisms of primitive religion only to explode them, reveal their perversities, and declare allegiance to the Victim of them.” [35] Bailie views the gospel account of the life of Jesus as the quintessential example of a revelation of the innocence of the victim. It is the dramatic story of one who directly challenged the violence of his world by willingly succumbing to that violence and at the same time forgives his persecutors. If we understand the gospel message in this way, we feel intense empathy for Jesus and see the evil in the systematic violence that killed him. Bailie argues that “by acclaiming the victim as Lord, the Gospels slowly begin to awaken an empathy for victims everywhere.” [36] The message here is a radical departure from that of sacred violence. Not only was Jesus innocent, but all victims are innocent. Crime or no crime, no one should become a scapegoat in