European research has clearly proved that the text in the Vedas adduced to authorize the immolation of widows was a wilful mistranslation.
Some of its enactments are purely pagan - thus one paragraph allows the mother to kill her new-born child, and another prescribes the immolation to the gods of the defiler of their temple; others are purely Christian, such as those which prohibit incestuous marriages and working on Sunday.
It is not merely that in its first establishment slavery was an immense advance by substituting for the immolation of captives, often accompanied by cannibalism, their occupation in labour for the benefit of the victor.
Was ever an immolation so belied As these intolerably nameless names?