The external features of Vedic rites are remarkable and unlike what we know of those performed by other nations of antiquity. The sacrifice is not as a rule a gift presented to a single god to win his favour. Oblations are made to most members of the pantheon in the course of a prolonged ceremony, but the time, manner and recipients of these oblations are fixed rather by the mysteries of sacrificial science, than by the sacrificer's need to propitiate a particular deity. Also the sacrifice is not offered in a temple and it would appear that in pre-Buddhist times there were no religious edifices. It is not even associated with sacred spots, such as groves or fountains haunted by a deity. The scene of operations requires long and careful preparation, but it is merely an enclosure with certain sheds, fireplaces and mounds. It has no architectural pretensions and is not a centre round which shrines can grow for it requires reconsecration for each ceremony, and in many cases must not be used twice. There is little that is national, tribal or communal about these rites. Some of them, such as the Aśvamedha or horse sacrifice and the Râjasaya, or consecration of a king, may be attended by games and sports, but that is because they are connected with secular events. In their essence sacrifices are not popular festivals or holidays but private services, performed for the benefit of the sacrificer, that is, the person who pays the fees of the priests. Usually they have a definite object and, though ceremonies for the attainment of material blessings are not wanting, this object is most frequently supramundane, such as the fabrication of a body in the heavenly world. It is in keeping with these characteristics that there should be no pomp or spectacular effect: the rites resemble some complicated culinary operation or scientific experiment, and the sacrificial enclosure has the appearance of a laboratory rather than a place of worship. Vedic ritual includes the sacrifice of animals, and there are indications of the former prevalence of human sacrifice. At the time when the Brâhmaṇas were composed the human victims were released alive, but afterwards the practice of real sacrifice was revived, probably owing to the continual incorporation into the Hindu community of semi-barbarous tribes and their savage deities. Human victims were offered to Mahâdevî the spouse of Siva until the last century, and would doubtless be offered now, were legal restrictions removed. But though the sporadic survival of an old custom in its most primitive and barbarous form is characteristic of Hinduism, the whole tendency of thought and practice since the rise of Buddhism has been adverse to religious bloodshed, even of animals. The doctrine of substitution and atonement, of offering the victim on behalf of the sacrificer, though not absent, plays a smaller part than in the religions of Western Asia.