Volltext - ub-dok: der Dokumentenserver der UB Trier - Universität ...

India to animal sacrifice, ‘tampering with the sacred rites of Hindu temples is a dangerous and
unpopular enterprise’ (Preston, 69). The ‘common thread of meaning which is reflected in both
the sacred scriptures and the folk level’, is that
it establishes hope where there is doubt and fear. The Hindu sacrifice is also
concerned with the reality of death and evil. Its overriding theme is the
promise that ignorance will lose its battle with truth. (Preston, 69)
It is in his incorporation of these Indian concepts that Koch’s Mike Langford departs
from Western traditions of visits to the ‘Otherworld’. Like Alice, after his overnight, 20-year
sleep, Rip Van Winkle returns home without much consequence. There had been a revolution
against King George III and a new democratic nation created while Rip was in Fairy Land, but
the upcoming elections remain the topic of choice, and so he quietly goes home to live with his
daughter. Other Western sources of the theme of the imagination, time and journeys to an
‘Otherworld’ have a more serious tone, but few quite share the Eastern gravity of the symbolic
meaning which Koch is trying to bring to his story.
The elaborate rites in the sacrifice are intended to make the animal a symbolic
vehicle for communication with the supernatural. It is considered to be
something of tangible value which the devotee is able to offer as a gift to
please the goddess and aid her as she struggles on his behalf. Evil is thus
vanquished only when man is willing to play his part in the divine drama.
(Preston, 69-70)
The point of all this is that the animal replaces man as the worthy sacrifice. The practice
of animal sacrifice and human sacrifice fulfils ancient Vedic rites which are necessary to
maintain the co-operation between men and gods in the struggle to uphold dharma. ‘The
animal offered to the deity is ultimately a symbol which man places on the sacrificial altar to
redeem his soul from its inevitable fall into the depths of darkness, ignorance and despair’
(Preston, 70). This is a role for which Mike Langford has been well prepared, and while
human sacrifice may have been officially abolished in the early 20 th century, to Koch it is once
again necessary as the demons have already become so powerful.
Langford’s association with the buffalo boy is foreshadowed and given import
throughout the novel, especially in such passages as when Jim Feng describes Langford’s
succouring function during the Soldiers’ Three capture. Feng says Langford could be tender,
- 367 -