Sacrifice itself means "to make sacred". when do you make an act
sacred? ;when you deify it. Then you convert it into a godly act.
This is an act of god not human. Bharatha would have cringed within
if he were to look at his act as that of sacrifice when out his sense
of duty ,love and his values he ruled on behalf of Rama. It is we who
look at it and call it sacrifice judging it from our world view.

Neither Meera nor Andal when they were giving up their conjugal
pleasures ever saw themselves as sacrificing. Others who looked at
them and could never emulate them called these acts as sacrifice.
There is no evidence to suggest that either Kunthi or Ghandari were
feeling that they have sacrificed something for the sake others.
Sacrifice perhaps does not have the great ego boosting tone for the
person who is committing the act. It is in the eye of the beholder
that it becomes a sacrifice.

As long as the feeling gets restricted to the beholder, benign
connotation of sacrifice does no harm. The moment the doer feels that
he is sacrificing, then there could be unknown expectations of payoff
lurking behind which may surface in future; there could be a holier
than thou feeing which may make others feel small and somewhere
defeats the whole purpose. Sacrifice could be a cunning accolade
given to an individual some time to make him take a decision which is
not in his self interest (like Eravan).Sacrifice could also be
sometimes acceptance of defeat and acceptance of the inevitable (like
perhaps puru). Sacrifice could also be an effort to dignify oneself
to boost up the ego to feel good within. Sacrifice could also be a
non judgemental sane acceptance of the play of fate(perhaps Kunthi)
sacrifice could also be an act of enactment of value with valour
thus enhancing one's existential identity like(Karnan).Or it could be
to retain the veneer of order in a society as an act of 'shreyas'
versus 'preyas' (like Rama). Many a time it is an act of atonement to
wash away the sins of earlier commissions and omissions of a person.

The cultural propensity of getting into gloy filled linear meanings
of sacrifice as something noble, converts an act of humanness to an
act of godliness. To act god, some may contend, may also be an act of
humaneness. To me it does not reflect humanness but a part of natural
human behaviour. In my value system such acts don't get selected as
those depicting humanness. If I were to classify these acts into
three buckets one as godliness, one as humanness and the last as
devilishness. All these acts of so called sacrifice, not recognised
for what they actually are, thrown towards these three buckets
would miss the humanness bucket and fall into either of the other
two. This is my personal world view.

The nobility ,even when assigned to the action by others need to
emanate from true love. Actions cannot be seen bereft of the ground
from which they are emerging. If that were so there would be no
difference between manipulation and consideration. Going beyond the
visible which is in the grip of five senses is required to decode
these grounds. In my inability to recognise and validate the
invisible behind the visible I do not want to commit the mistake of
acknowledging only the visible. Being yourself, has no meaning then
and becoming in the eyes of other(in terms of what you want to
project) takes theupper hand.

All this talk then brings us to the Mythology of love.

"Eros" –an aspect of love governed by physical passion. The energy of
Eros can be related to sin (Nakusha's advances towards Indrani and
subsequent curse, Indra's illicit craving for Akalya and subsequent
consequences) or creation (like kindling the Eros aspect of Shiva for
creation of Subrahmanya) or seduction (Vishnu's seduction act at the
time of Samudra mathan, Bikshatanas act of attracting the Asuris) in
the Indian mythology. I have not come across sacrifice as a
theme.this can also be related to the meaning given to the five
arrows of Manmatha.(Harshanam, Rocanam,Mohanam, Maranam)

"Agape", this is the aspect of love which gets reflected as
compassion or charity as reflected in Christ's attitude towards the
neighbour (love thy neighbour).Bodhisattva's stand that he would be
the last person to leave the earth along with the last soul which
gets released from the cycle of life and death exemplifies the
sacrifice of a person who chooses the supreme act of humanness over
godliness. You see this in the not-so-much-a-myth story of Shirdi Sai
who gave his life for a devotee of his. He chose the permanence of
death over continuity of ego. Perhaps the ultimate sacirfce.Kannapa
Nayanar's sacrifice for the eye of a linga, Siva's consumption of the
poison, talks of sacrifice which comes more as aninevitable action
born out of instantaneous response of a human being without any
other thought but come through as supreme sacrifice for us.

If the nature of 'Agape' belongs to heavens and 'Eros' belongs to
netherworld there is another category of love belonging to the arena
of earth-'Amor'. It is born of the beholders eye and its connection
to the heart. Mythological examples could be Radha's and Gopi's love
for Krishna, Andal and Meera's love for lord Vishnu in his incarnated
form, Rama's love for Sita when he looked at her(kambar describes
this as annalum parthan avalum parthal).This amorous love is gentle,
caring ,emerging from a noble heart , a predilection of eye and its
connection with heart. Love of Mandodari, Sita, Anasuya, and Bharatha
are not of the divine kind but of a human kind. Many of their acts of
love can be classified as sacrificeby the bystanderswho have not had
that experience themselves. But to call them would be a sacrilege and
insult to the gentle sensitivity of these souls. These are acts of
love