One cannot solve the Agnīṣomīya problem (the clash between the prohibition to perform any violence and the prescription to slaughter an animal as an offer to Agni and Soma) via an appeal to suspension (bādha) of the prohibition to perform violence.
Using suspension would be based on the fact that the prescription to perform the Agnīṣomīya is more specific than the prohibition. However, if this were a viable move, then it would apply also to the case of the Śyena (a sacrifice to be performed in order to achieve the death of one’s enemy). But all Mīmāṃsā authors agree that the śyena should not be performed.
Thus the Agnīṣomīya case cannot be solved through suspension, as this would have been applicable also to the Śyena scenario and this would be an unwanted output.
How else can the Agnīṣomīya riddle be solved? By explaining that the prohibition against violence was only about violence-as-part-of-the-result and not about violence-as-part-of-the-instrument. Thus, sacrificial violence, which is only part of the sacrifice qua instrument, was never forbidden, whereas violence as part of a sacrifice’s result is forbidden.
Now, you may suggest that this reasoning leads to the unwanted consequence that violence which is instrumental to a different result would also not be prohibited. Does this mean that beating someone in order to take their wallet would not be prohibited, because it is instrumental? No, because here violence would be part of the result (you want the person to be made harmless/unable to react).
This is, by the way, consistent with my previous studies on deontic conflicts, according to which suspension can only be applied to prescriptions, and not to prohibitions.
This controversy has been resolved. The practice of animal sacrifice is mentioned in several Tantric texts, which are a part of Tamas Sadhanas. My studies show that Shrimad Devi Bhagwad Purana has clarified the subject without any fraction of doubt. Shrimad Devi Bhagwad Purana says that Tamas Sadhanas were also created by Bhagwan Shiva. However, these were to delude the people. Therefore, people should only perform Agama Sadhanas for their benefit. Agama Sadhanas include Ganpataya, Shaiv, Vaishnav, Shakt and Saur (Sun) sadhanas. Please check Shrimad Devi Bhagwad Purana Vol 2, 7.39.26 to 29
Also in the Epic, this controversy is addressed, in a dialogue between an Ascetic and an Adhvaryu Vedic priest, recalled as itihasa or ancient tradition (Asvamedha parvan xxix = Anugita xiii as excerpted for SBE VIII 290&&). The Ascetic objects to the Adhvaryu’s animal sacrifice, and his first reply is by instrumentality and intent, very much as stated by elisa.
But the Ascetic does not açept this argument, citing the well-known Ahimsa principle as a *positive injunction, to *do no harm, which does not allow the suspension. He explains, “We substantiate from what is visible or manifest,” like a modern positivist or empiricist. Here the SBE footnote cites Apastamba’s law book, 1.1.4.8 on the visible as expressly stated, not by inference, which is involved in the argument by instrumentality. And now shows the ancient roots of Apastamba’s tradition!
The Adhvaryu’s second argument is from the human condition as existential given: we cannot in fact live without taking life: “Or what do you think, O twice-born one?” Now the Ascetic concedes, out of respect for life as encompassing reality, citing the indestructible and destructible as the opposites from which we seek freedom. And so the two are completely reconciled, where Aristotle picked up the metaphysical problem of opposites.
The Epic gives this tradition at the close, as if following on from the Moksadharma, which is to say in the way of Narada, tradition running with Shaiv and Vaishnav, as Nutan has it.
It follows for comparative studies that elisa’s position derives after Apastamba’s introduction or review of the ancient roots of law. And the logic to me echoes not in the empiricist Hume playing skeptic to ancients and moderns alike, but to his critic Kant, on constitutive and regulatory principles, in the sense of fundamental laws as given principles, and rules of procedure in judgement, which are circumstantial or contingent. As earlier with Erasmus and Luther, we have an echo from the east of Europe.