The whole Brahman caste considered itself divine or as partaking in the life of the god, the original reason for this perhaps being that the Brahmans obtained the exclusive right to perform sacrifices, and hence the life of the sacrificial animal or food passed to them, as in other societies it passed to the king who performed the sacrifice.

A Brahman further holds that the five gods, Indra, Brahma, Siva, Vishnu and Ganesh, are present in different parts of his body, [142] and here again the life of the god is seen to be divided into innumerable fragments.

The priests of the Vallabhacharya sect, the Gokulastha Gosains, were all held to be possessed by the god Krishna, so that it was esteemed a high privilege to perform the most menial offices for them, because to touch them was equivalent to touching the god, and perhaps assimilating by contact a fragment of his divine life and nature.

[143] The belief in a common life would also explain the veneration of domestic animals and the prohibition against killing them, because to kill one would injure the whole life of the species, from which the tribe drew its subsistence.

Similarly in a number of cases the first idea of seasonal fasts is that the people abstain from the grain or fruit which is growing or sown in the ground.