Sacrifice is as old as humankind. The essence of sacrifice emerges from the etymology of the word itself: Latin sacer-facere, meaning, 'to make sacred'. Through sacrifice, the sacrificing community believes that it is made sacred by the purging of sins and renewed relation with the Divine. What is sacrificed loses itself by being poured out, burnt or slain. The loss of the sacrificed victim is somehow seen as bringing proportionate gain to the sacrificers.
In Sanskrit yagya and tyaga denote sacrifice. While yagya refers to ritual sacrifice, tyaga pertains to sacrifice at the existential level, which complements the ritual and completes it. The inherent power of sacrifice can only be released when one seeks to fulfil the demands of both yagya and tyaga.
Reni Girard and Sigmund Freud have given sociological and psychological reasons, respectively, as motives for offering sacrifices. Yet, the root reason for sacrifice is largely religious. Narratives of religious traditions worldwide reveal a kaleidoscopic spectrum of sacrifices wherein animals, humans and even gods offer or are offered as sacrifice, shed blood and die.
Yagya is not the prerogative of human beings. Creation myths reveal that the gods, too, create the cosmos and sustain it through sacrifice. In the Purusa Sukta narrative of the Rig Veda the creator offers himself as libation or ahuti, a primordial sacrifice that provides the rationale for all other sacrifices by humans. Here, the primordial Purusa becomes both, offerer and victim, enjoining devotees to adhere to dharma by their own yagya and tyaga for maintaining cosmic order.
The story of the father's sacrifice of his son is the prototype of sacrifice in many religions. The Ho tribals of the Chotanagpur belt believe that the Divine Being, Singbonga, appeared as a boy, Toro Kora, to save humankind from the greed of the Asurs who smelted iron selfishly without concern for the earth or its peoples. When their toil went in vain, the Asurs decided to sacrifice a child to the Divine Being. Toro Kora offered himself to be burnt in a furnace, but emerged later as an ethereal being.
The near-sacrifice of a son Isaac (Ishmael) by his father Abraham (Ibrahim) is popular in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. God asked for this sacrifice as a test of faith. Pleased with the faith and surrender of both father and son, God arranged that a ram be sacrificed. Thus, the yearly commemoration of Eid al-Adha, the 'festival of sacrifice' popularly called 'Bakri Eid' is not only celebrated with a yagya or qurbani of an animal, but also with giving food and money to the poor, expressive of tyaga.
Besides this father-son motif of sacrifice that Christianity shares with Judaism and Islam, it further believes that Jesus is God's son who offered himself as a sacrifice to bring new life to others, especially those burdened by ritualism and socio-religious ostracism. Jesus said: "I desire mercy, not sacrifice." And at his last supper Jesus said, "No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends." The ritual act of breaking bread at that supper was seen as fulfilled in the breaking of Jesus's own body and the shedding of his blood.
There is almost universal admiration for one who selflessly sacrifices himself for the common good. This is tyaga at its best, epitomised by M K Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr in more recent times. For Gandhi, voluntary acceptance of suffering has immense power for social renewal.