1With Sacrifice et Violence. Réflexions autour d’une ethnographie au Népal, Marie Lecomte-Tilouine offers us a faithful portrayal and rich description of what she calls ‘sacrificial violence as a singularity’, which we can approach only through consideration of the web of relations that surrounds it (conclusion, p285). Drawing on her long and rich fieldwork experience, she gives a comprehensive description of the ‘cultural ecology’ of Nepalese sacrificial rituals, in the sense of the way such singular acts relate to a variety of discourses, narratives and activities that are more or less explicitly connected to the concept of sacrifice and its component of violence.

2The author discusses the main theories of sacrifice, which are mostly based on textual material (chap 2) from the Hellenists J-P Vernant and M Détienne vs M Mauss and H Hubert, the Indianists C Malamoud vs F Staal, the Africanist L de Heusch vs the literary analyst R Girard, etc. Beyond these theories and their contributions to the debate, what sounds very true to me in the author’s discussion is that she takes seriously the reality of violence, of being ‘splashed with blood’ during sacrificial rituals, and the psychological ambivalence and complexity of facing it in a festive context. The author achieves this admirably without falling into Girard’s generalist psychology of a hidden collective violence or into the structural/culturalist aspiration for a fully ‘logical’ interpretation advanced by de Heusch. The act of sacrificing is thus found to be not meaningless (vs Staal), but rather overflowing with explicit and textual ‘meanings’. The latter appear more like a posteriori legitimation than a priori explanations, a tendency that seems to be implied in the Brahmanic reading of sacrifice as the act of creation par excellence, a creation of both society and the cosmos (Malamoud). This overflowing also appears in the absence of a definite answer to the question ‘who answers?’ in reply to the sacrificer when the latter gives some grains of rice to the animal, looking for the victim’s reaction as a sign of agreement for the sacrifice to be performed. When the animal takes the grains, is it the animal who gives his consent (as offering) or the deity (as recipient)? (p33).

Beyond theories, Lecomte-Tilouine rightly focuses on ethnographical materials and local concepts of sacrifice:

– bali dân or sacrifice of blood mostly by decapitation,

– yagya or the sacrifice according to Brahmanical rules,

– hom or sacrifice to fire.

3The book focuses on the first concept (bali dân), which is locally translated as ‘gift of strength’, a popular etymology that literally reflects the fact that certain Nepalese people eat meat almost exclusively during ritual occasions (p37, p132). This economic reality contributes to the deep ambivalence of feelings expressed towards animals during the rituals. On the one hand, there is a strong clear association between ascribed masculinity (the model of which remains the warrior) and mastery over feelings as well as over the technique of killing without inflicting unnecessary suffering upon the animal (p132–7). There is a male initiation dimension to it. On the other hand, women or children are deeply attached to the young goats they feed themselves with, and some of them blame the masculine violence and are affected by the loss. But the same persons can explain that only ‘precious’ beings are of enough value to be sacrificed (p172, in the case mentioned, in the intention to safeguard the life of the speaker’s own son), or to rejoice around the festive banquet afterwards. Along the same lines, some participants assert that animals have no consciousness, while others point to the animals’ gaze and bellowing to attest to the fact that ‘the animals do know’ or feel the danger and smell the blood. To extend this reflection, it would be interesting to know more discourses about animals, and buffaloes in particular, or to compare with other sacrificial narratives where humans show signs of ‘conceptual malaise’ towards killing animals (Hugh-Jones 2019 after P Erickson), and play the famous ‘comedy of innocence’ (Dalla Bernardina 1991, comparing the rhetoric of hunter-gatherers with European contemporary hunters about the status of animals), putting the blame on the animals in order to reverse the responsibility of violence (here the myth of the buffalo-demon could be seen in this perspective).

4Not only in terms of individual feelings but more widely, the author highlights the true complexity and inner contradictions of the sacrifice. And as regards practices, it is truly an ‘oxymoron’ to combine ‘devotion and butchery’ or to present killing an animal as an act of ‘peace’. Ultimately, the interpretations illustrate the same complexity, by offering opposite narratives on the origins of sacrifice and about its supposed significance and aim. Sacrifice is thus either understood as a periodic celebration of the cosmic destruction of demonic forces or as a mundane stage in the subjugation of low castes and local tribes. The author shows the complementarity of castes involved in the ritual but, beyond a structural perspective which would integrate these tensions as a harmonious whole, she demonstrates ‘the divisive nature of sacrifice within the very group that practises it’ (p18). Quoting Béteille, she presents caste order as a dynamic field more than a complete system. For a further step in this direction, I would recommend H Tambs-Lyche (2017), who theorises about the Brahmanical view on castes as a ‘hierarchising discourse’ that tries to impose an ideological unity on what are in fact endlessly ‘competing orders’. In this sense, sacrifice is both a portrayal of the social hierarchies presented as necessary and legitimate, and a periodic risky staging where inner tensions and the violence of society are publicly exposed and ‘resolved’ through the execution of a living being (p292).

5The author highlights the fact that the act of killing contributes to the ‘intensification’ of the feast (drum beating, capturing the audience’s full attention, sudden possessions when the buffalo is beheaded, agitation when touching the ‘fountain of blood’, etc), or ‘reinforces the reality of ritual’ (p28). It calls to my mind Bataille’s and de Heusch’s reflections on transgression as a powerful symbolic and political tool. But Lecomte-Tilouine’s ethnography gives a more aesthetic and affective turn to it through the rich contributions taken from Nepalese poetry and songs about wars, heroes and Maoïsts (with the martyrdom rhetoric, p237; for comparison, see Shah 2019: 91–95), which should in fact make the audience ‘laugh and cry’ in order to be touching and successful. All these complementary descriptions help us to understand how sacrifice is a play, but which becomes ‘surreal’ (my expression) through the irreversible act of inflicting death (because such an act ‘reinforces the reality of ritual’). As an ‘oxymoric practice’ (relying on a ‘subjective chiasm’ between denegation and awareness of violence, p44), the very efficacy of sacrifice or, to put it differently, the ‘fascination’ it has for people, might be this knitting together, at different levels, of irreconcilable contradictions.

6I would like to conclude with a last reflection on the relation between practices and discourses, or more exactly between myth and ritual. As the author shows, ‘The sacrifice is not a minute repetition of the myth’, the buffalo’s death being the only moment when ‘representation becomes presentification’ (p35, p52, chap3, following Vernant’s concept of presentification of divine powers, as their very incarnation beyond mere visual representation). Ethnography demonstrates the rather fluid relationship between the actual buffalo sacrifice and the myth of the goddess killing the buffalo-demon, which strikingly echoes the puzzle encountered by an art historian on the vexed issue of the origin of the buffalo-killer goddess theme (Mahisasuramardini). The discrepancy between early (1st–3rd century) sculptures and texts (Skandapurana, Devi Mahatmya) has led C Schmid (2011; after Phyllis Granoff) to the hypothesis that the first references may actually go back to ancient rituals of consecration and victory, where the (then not yet personalised) ‘goddess’ was probably just an ‘allegory of the ritual’ or victory. An interesting convergence indeed, which confirms the central relationship between sacrifice and war violence that ethnography has for a long time shown and which appears even in Vedic texts (cf J Heesterman, p76). As the author mentions several times, animal sacrifice was often a preparation for war between humans, the sacrificial sword being a long-lasting icon of kingship, accompanied by a procession of flags (p138, p174), elements present in many Indian contexts. One last element that could be further addressed is the precise relationship and differences between buffalo sacrifices in Hindu royal contexts and in ‘tribal’ ones. On this topic, see Peter Berger (2023) regarding south Odisha, in which he insists less on politics than on the regenerative dimension of sacrifices for the earth and the group who offers the victim.