Sanatana Dharma, in its truth and purity lays utmost stress on Satyam, Jnanam, Dharma, Ahimsa, (Truth, Knowledge, Dharma, Non-injury), inner and outer purity of thought and conduct. Rituals in general are not the mainstream of Sanatana Dharma which is mainly about a spiritual seeking and Godward growth in a number of ways. Mainly rituals came up because of a misleading of the deeper meaning of the mystic lore which often clothed profound truths in symbols of everyday life. Sacrificing an animal evidently means the animal tendencies within us just as lighting a yajna fire means lighting the fire of aspiration and purification within us. But human beings catch the outer as it is easy and miss the inner, deeper sense. To believe that any divine being will be happy spilling animal blood is outrightly foolish. Especially from the point of view of the law of karma it would be a dastardly act to kill a helpless creature for the joys of the palate and give it a holy name of sacrifice.
But since the Sanatana Dharma has allowed all kinds of relation with divinity, it has accepted and included within it certain ways of worship that belong to the more primitive animal-like and Rakshasa-like stage of human evolution. That is how the bali-pratha, animal sacrifice persists in certain sections of the wider Sanatana Dharma. It is certainly not the true and mainstream of the Sanatana Dharma, not something that is either mandatory or looked up at. It is at best confined to certain primitive sections as well as the warrior class. In the former it is done to appease certain crude forms of deities lower down on the scale of other-worldly beings, especially certain lower deities in the tantra. In the latter it was practiced to desensitise against the act of killing and emphasise the importance of sacrificing life if need be. But these practices which persist in certain sections do not belong to the mainstream Sanatana Dharma which is based on the Vedas and the Upanishads, the Gita and the White Tantra. They have however been taken in and absorbed as part of the larger Hinduism that tried to put everything in its place rather than completely discarding it.
Affectionately,
Alok Da
