The sacrifice occupies a high place in the religion of the Rig Veda, but it is not all-important, as it is later.  Nevertheless, the same presumptuous assumption that the gods depend on earthly sacrifice is often made; the result of which, even before the collection was complete (IV. 50), was to teach that gods and men depended on the will of the wise men who knew how properly to conduct a sacrifice, the key-note of religious pride in the Brahmanic period.

Indra depends on the sacrificial soma to accomplish his great works.  The gods first got power through the sacrificial fire and soma.[56] That images of the gods were supposed to be powerful may be inferred from the late verses, “who buys this Indra,” etc. (above), but allusions to idolatry are elsewhere extremely doubtful.[57]

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES: 

     [Footnote 1:  Compare T[=a]itt.  S. VII. 4.2.1.  The gods win
     immortality by means of ‘sacrifice’ in this later
     priest-ridden period.]

     [Footnote 2:  Ludwig (IV. p. 134) wrongly understands a hell
     here.]

     [Footnote 3:  ‘Yama’s seat’ is here what it is in the epic,
     not a chapel (Pischel), but a home.]

     [Footnote 4:  This may mean ‘to Yama (and) to death.’  In the
     Atharva Veda, V. 24. 13-14, it is said that Death is the
     lord of men; Yama, of the Manes.]

[Footnote 5:  It is here said, also, that the ’Gandharva in the waters and the water-woman’ are the ties of consanguinity between Yama and Yam[=i], which means, apparently, that their parents were Moon and Water; a late idea, as in viii. 48. 13 (unique).]

[Footnote 6:  The passage, X. 17, 1-2, is perhaps meant as a riddle, as Bloomfield suggests (JAOS.  XV. p. 172).  At any rate, it is still a dubious passage.  Compare Hillebrandt, Vedische Mythologie, I. p. 503.]

     [Footnote 7:  Cited by Scherman, Visionslitteratur, p.
     147.]

     [Footnote 8:  Possibly, ‘streams.’]

     [Footnote 9:  AV.  XVIII. 3. 13.]

     [Footnote 10:  Compare AV.  VI. 88. 2:  “King Varuna and God
     Brihaspati,” where both are gods.]

     [Footnote 11:  [Greek:  Kerberos](=Cabala)=_C[=a]rvara_. 
     Saram[=a] is storm or dawn, or something else that means
     ‘runner.’]

     [Footnote 12:  Here the fiend is expelled by a four-eyed dog
     or a white one which has yellow ears.  See the Sacred Books
     of the East, IV. p.  IXXXVII.]

     [Footnote 13:  Scherman proposes an easy solution, namely to
     cut the description in two, and make only part of it refer
     to the dogs! (loc. cit. p. 130).]

     [Footnote 14:  The dogs may be meant in I. 29. 3, but compare
     II. 31. 5.  Doubtful is I. 66. 8, according to Bergaigne,
     applied to Yama as fire.]