The Boy Bound for Sacrifice

The sages told the Pandavas of Shunahshepha, the boy who was bound to be offered in a sacrifice and was saved by the power of prayer and the compassion of a sage - a tale that turned the world away from the offering of human life, and showed that the gods desire mercy and devotion, not the blood of the innocent.

There was a king who, in his longing for a son, had made a hard and terrible vow to the god Varuna: that if the god would grant him a son, he would one day offer that very son back to the god in sacrifice. A son was granted him; but when the time came that the god required the promised offering, the king's heart failed him, as any father's would, and he could not bring himself to sacrifice his own beloved child. Yet the vow hung over him, and the god required its keeping; and the king sought desperately for some way to satisfy the vow without slaying his own son.