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brothers, finding that it flavoured the mess, killed and devoured her.'

HUMAN SACRIFICE IN MODERN TIMES.

Up to quite modern times the same was the case, and there is some evidence to show that the custom has not quite ceased.

Until the beginning of the present century, the custom of offering a first-born child to the Ganges was common. Akin to this is the Gangâ Jâtra, or murder of sick relatives on the banks of the sacred river, of which a case occurred quite recently at Calcutta. At Katwa, near Calcutta, a leper was burnt alive in 1812; he threw himself into a pit ten cubits deep which was filled with burning coals. He tried to escape, but his mother and sister thrust him in again and he was burnt. They believed that by so doing he would gain a pure body in the next birth. Of this religious suicide in Central India, Sir J. Malcolm wrote: "Selfsacrifice of men is less common than it used to be, and the men who do it are generally of low tribes. One of their chief motives is that they will be born Râjas at their next incarnation. Women who have been long barren, vow their first child, if one be given to them, to Omkâr Mandhâta. The first knowledge imparted to the infant is this vow, and the impression is so implanted in his mind, that years before his death he seems like a man haunted by his destiny. There is a tradition that anyone saved after the leap over the cliff near the shrine must be made Râja of the place; but to make this impossible, poison is mixed with the last victuals given to the devoted man, who is compelled to carry out his purpose.

The modern instances of human sacrifice among the Khândhs of Bengal and the Mers of Râjputâna are sufficiently notorious. It also prevailed among some of the Drâvidian tribes up to quite recent times. The Kharwârs,

1 "North Indian Notes and Queries," iii. 65.
2 Ibid., ii. 22.

3" Central India," ii. 210.

since adopting Hinduism, performed human sacrifices to Kâlî in the form of Chandî. Some of our people who fell into their hands during the Mutiny were so dealt with. The same was the case with the Bhuiyas, Khândhs, and Mundas. Some of the Gonds of Sarguja used to offer human sacrifice to Burha Deo, and still go through a form of doing so. There is a recent instance quoted among the Tiyars, a class of boatmen in Benares; one Tonurâm sacrificed four men in the hope of recovering the treasures of seven Râjas; another man was killed to propitiate a Râkshasa who guarded a treasure supposed to be concealed in a house where the deed was committed. About 1881 a village headman sacrificed a human being to Kâlî in the Sambalpur District, and a similar charge was made against the chief of Bastar not many years ago.

Of the Karhâda Brâhmans of Bombay, Sir J. Malcolm writes: "The tribe of Brâhmans called Karhâda had formerly a horrid custom of annually sacrificing to their deities a young Brahman. The Saktî is supposed to delight in human blood, and is represented with fiery eyes and covered with red flowers. This goddess holds in one hand a sword and in the other a battle-axe. The prayers of her votaries are directed to her during the first nine days of the Dasahra feast, and on the evening of the tenth a grand repast is prepared, to which the whole family is invited. An intoxicating drug is contrived to be mixed with the food of the intended victim, who is often a stranger whom the master of the house has for several months treated with the greatest kindness and attention, and sometimes, to lull suspicion, given him his daughter in marriage. As soon as the poisonous and intoxicating drug operates, the master of the house unattended takes the devoted person into the temple, leads him three times round the idol, and on his prostrating himself

1 Campbell, "Khondistân," passim; Frazer, "Golden Bough," i. 384 sqq.; "Rajputâna Gazetteer," ii. 47; Dalton, "Descriptive Ethnology," 130, 147, 176, 285 sq., 281.

2 Chevers, "Medical Jurisprudence," 406, 411.

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3 Campbell, Notes," 339: Wilson, Indian Caste," ii. 22 sq.; "Bombay Gazetteer,” x. 114.

before it, takes this opportunity of cutting his throat. He collects with the greatest care the blood in a small bowl, which he first applies to the lips of the ferocious goddess, and then sprinkles it over her body; and a hole having been dug at the feet of the idol for the corpse, he deposits it with great care to prevent discovery. After this the Karhâda Brâhman returns to his family, and spends the night in mirth and revelry, convinced that by the bloodthirsty act he has propitiated the goddess for twelve years. On the morning of the following day the corpse is taken from the hole in which it had been thrown, and the idol deposited till next Dasahra, when a similar sacrifice is made."

There seems reason to suspect that even in the present day such sacrifices are occasionally performed at remote shrines of Kâlî or Durgâ Devî. Within the last few years a significant case of the kind occurred at Benares. There are numerous instances from Nepâl.' At Jaypur, near Vizagapatam, the Râja is said, at his installation in 1861, to have sacrificed a girl to Durgâ. A recent case of such sacrifice with the object of recovering hidden treasure occurred in Berâr; a second connected with witchcraft at Muzaffarnagar. At Chanda and Lanji in the Province of Nagpur there are shrines to Kâlî at which human sacrifices to the goddess have been offered almost within the memory of this generation.

Besides the religious form of human sacrifice in honour of one of these bloodthirsty deities, there are forms of the rite which depend on the mystic power attributed to human flesh and blood in various charms and black magic.

In connection with human flesh a curious story is told of a man who went to bathe in the Ganges, and met one of the abominable Faqîrs known as Augars or Aghorpanthis, who carry about with them fragments of a human corpse. He saw the Faqir cut off and eat a piece of the flesh of a corpse, and he then offered him a piece, saying

Wright, "History," 11, note.

2 Ball," Jungle Life," 580.

3 "North Indian Notes and Queries,” i. 112, 148. And for other instances, see Balfour, "Cyclopædia," iii. 477 sqq.

that if he ate it he would become enormously rich. He refused the ghastly food, and the Faqîr then threw a piece at him which stuck to his head, forming a permanent lump.' In one of the tales of Somadeva the witches are seen flying about in the air, and say, "These are the magic powers of witches' spells, and are due to the eating of human flesh.” In another the hero exchanges an anklet with a woman for some human flesh."

The same mysterious power is attributed to human blood. The blood of the Jinn has, it is hardly necessary to say, special powers of its own. Thus, in one of the Kashmîr stories the angel says: "This is a most powerful Jinn. Should a drop of his blood fall to the ground while life is in him, another Jinn will be quickly formed therefrom, and spring up and slay you." Bathing in human blood has been regarded as a powerful remedy for disease. The Emperor Constantine was ordered a bath of children's blood, but moved by the prayers of the parents, he forbore to apply the remedy and was rewarded by a miraculous recovery. In one of the European folk-tales a woman desirous of offspring is directed to take a horn and cup herself, draw out a clot of blood, place it in a pot, lute it down and only uncover it in the ninth month, when a child would be found in the pot. In the German folk-tales, bathing in the blood of innocent maidens is a cure for leprosy.*

The same beliefs largely prevail in India. In 1870, a Musalmân butcher losing his child was told by a Hindu conjuror that if he washed his wife in the blood of a boy, his next infant would be healthy. To ensure this result a child was murdered. A similar case occurred in Muzaffarnagar, where a child was killed and the blood drunk by a barren woman." In one of the tales of Somadeva the preg1 "Panjâb Notes and Queries," iii. 75.

2 Tawney, "Katha Sarit Sâgara," i. 157, 214.

3 Knowles, "Folk-tales," 2.

Leland, "Etruscan Roman Remains," 294; Grimm, "Household Tales," i. 396; Hartland, "Legend of Perseus," i. 98.

5 66

Report Inspector-General Police, N.-W.P., 1870," page 93; "Pan

jâb Notes and Queries," ii. 205; iii. 74, 162; Chevers, prudence," 842, 396; Campbell, "Notes," 338.

Medical Juris

nant queen asks her husband to gratify her longing by filling a tank with blood for her to bathe in. He was a righteous man, and in order to gratify her craving he had a tank filled with the juice of lac and other extracts, so that it seemed to be full of blood. In another tale the ascetic tells the woman that if she killed her young son and offered him to the divinity, another son would certainly be born to her. Quite recently at Muzaffarnagar a childless Jât woman was told that she would attain her desire if she bathed in water mixed with the blood of a Brâhman child. A Hindu coolie at Mauritius bathed in and drank the blood of a girl, thinking that thereby he would be gifted with supernatural powers. It would be easy to add largely to the number of instances of similar beliefs."'

SURVIVALS OF HUMAN SACRIFICE.

There are, in addition, numerous customs which appear to be survivals of human sacrifice, or of the blood covenant, which also prevailed in Arabia. Among the lower castes in Northern India the parting of the bride's hair is marked with red, a survival of the original blood covenant, by which she was introduced into the sept of her husband. We see that this is the case from the rites of the more savage tribes. Among the Kewats of Bengal, a tiny scratch is made on the little finger of the bridegroom's right hand and of the bride's left, and the drops of blood drawn from these are mixed. with the food. Each then eats the food with which the other's blood has been mixed. Among the Santâls blood is drawn in the same way from the little finger of the bride and bridegroom, and with it marks are made on both above the clavicle.3

HUMAN SACRIFICE AND BUILDINGS.

One standing difficulty at each decennial census has been the rumour which spreads in remote tracts that Government

1 "North Indian Notes and Queries," i. 148; iii. 71.

2 Robertson-Smith, "Kinship," 48 sq.

3 Risley, "Tribes and Castes," i. 456; Dalton, " Descriptive Ethnology,"

220.

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