Ishti

Sanskrit इष्टि ("ishti") - 1. Wish, desire. 2. A sacrifice, any sacrificial rite... 

This is the essence of "sacrifice": Hey God (insert name here), we want a lot of something, and in exchange, here is a bit of something...Fair enough?

People made God(s) in their own image, because it is easier to bargain with someone who has a human face, than with a faceless natural force...It is easier to pray for rain to a Rain God than to a cloudless sky...

Every prayer is a wish addressed to someone who we believe can fulfil it...And in exchange we give something in return, something we think is less valuable...Or promise to give at least...

Please mum, can I get...I promise I will...🙂

And so, once you humanise a natural force, you, being human, and knowing how humans work, naturally, try to cheat it, by performing "iṣṭi", a sacrifice...or promising to perform a sacrifice if you get what you want...That's called thanksgiving...

Please Rain God, give us rain when we need it and as much as we need it so that my grain granaries area again full this harvest time...In exchange here is a sacrificial bread, wine... Come and eat and drink it with us...

Fair enough?

So if the Rain God is a benevolent one, meaning if the climate is predictable and suitable for agriculture, then the rains will come when they are needed and as much as they are needed. The sacrificial feast seems to work...And this is what god keeps getting...

But if the Rain God is a grumpy f*ker, and the climate suddenly starts to wobble, and becomes unpredictable, and rains suddenly stop arriving when they are needed and as much as they are needed, the sacrifice changes...

Please Rain God, please give us some rain or my grain harvest will be bad and and my family will starve...We'll have to eat bloody acorns again...Here is a sacrificial animal...Come and eat it with us...

Some Rain Gods will be happy with the "smell of burned meet"...And they will supply rains when they are needed and as much as they are needed...But sometimes Rain Gods like to play hard...And sacrifice becomes the ultimate sacrifice...Human sacrifice...

Of course people wouldn't be people if they didn't try to cheat even at the brink of death...In its essence, even a human sacrifice, even a sacrifice of the first born children, was an attempt to bargain with god, to get a lot for a little...

Please Rain God, please give us some rain or my grain will wither and die and then my family will starve and die...Here is one of my children, please, give us rain so the rest of them will survive...

Terrible...But still in essence the same attempt to bargain with gods to get what we want ("ishti") for what we are willing to pay, sacrifice ("ishti")...

For the record:

According to the linguists, the Sanskrit इष्टि ("ishti") comes from Proto-Indo-European *h₁yaǵ-nós ("to sacrifice, worship") while the Serbian "išti" is the second person imperative of "ìskati" which comes from Proto-Indo-European *h₂i-sḱé-ti ("to wish, request, search") and are apparently unrelated...

So why are all these dictionaries saying that this is one and the same word? 

According to the linguists, the fact that इष्टि (ishti) also means ("to wish, desire") is "a later semantic change" that developed because people did connect wishing and sacrificing, but that does not mean that they have the same origin...

Don't know...