The Gonds were formerly accustomed to offer human sacrifices,
especially to the goddess Kali and to the goddess Danteshwari, the
tutelary deity of the Rajas of Bastar. Her shrine was at a place called
Dantewara, and she was probably at first a local goddess and afterwards
identified with the Hindu goddess Kali. An inscription recently found
in Bastar records the grant of a village to a Medipota in order to
secure the welfare of the people and their cattle. This man was the
head of a community whose business it was, in return for the grants of
land which they enjoyed, to supply victims for human sacrifice either
from their own families or elsewhere. Tradition states that on one
occasion as many as 101 persons were sacrificed to avert some great
calamity which had befallen the country. And sacrifices also took place
when the Raja visited the temple. During the period of the Bhonsla rule
early in the nineteenth century the Raja of Bastar was said to have
immolated twenty-five men before he set out to visit the Raja of Nagpur
at his capital. This would no doubt be as an offering for his safety,
and the lives of the victims were given as a substitute for his own. A
guard was afterwards placed on the temple by the Marathas, but reports
show that human sacrifice was not finally stamped out until the Nagpur
territories lapsed to the British in 1853. At Chanda and Lanji also,
Mr. Hislop states, human sacrifices were offered until well into the
nineteenth century [77] at the temples of Kali. The victim was taken
to the temple after sunset and shut up within its dismal walls. In
the morning, when the door was opened, he was found dead, much to the
glory of the great goddess, who had shown her power by coming during
the night and sucking his blood. No doubt there must have been some
of her servants hid in the fane whose business it was to prepare the
horrid banquet. It is said that an iron plate was afterwards put over
the face of the goddess to prevent her from eating up the persons
going before her. In Chanda the legend tells that the families of
the town had each in turn to supply a victim to the goddess. One day
a mother was weeping bitterly because her only son was to be taken
as the victim, when an Ahir passed by, and on learning the cause of
her sorrow offered to go instead. He took with him the rope of hair
with which the Ahirs tie the legs of their cows when milking them
and made a noose out of it. When the goddess came up to him he threw
the noose over her neck and drew it tight like a Thug. The goddess
begged him to let her go, and he agreed to do so on condition that
she asked for no more human victims. No doubt, if the legend has any
foundation, the Ahir found a human neck within his noose. It has been
suggested in the article on Thug that the goddess Kali is really the
deified tiger, and if this were so her craving for human sacrifices
is readily understood. All the three places mentioned, Dantewara,
Lanji and Chanda, are in a territory where tigers are still numerous,
and certain points in the above legends favour the idea of this animal
origin of the goddess. Such are the shutting of the victim in the
temple at night as an animal is tied up for a tiger-kill, and the
closing of her mouth with an iron plate as the mouths of tigers are
sometimes supposed to be closed by magic. Similarly it may perhaps be
believed that the Raja of Bastar offered human sacrifices to protect
himself and his party from the attacks of tigers, which would be the
principal danger on a journey to Nagpur. In Mandla there is a tradition
that a Brahman boy was formerly sacrificed at intervals to the god Bura
Deo, and the forehead of the god was marked with his hair in place
of sandalwood, and the god bathed in his blood and used his bones as
sticks for playing at ball. Similarly in Bindranawagarh in Raipur the
Gonds are said to have entrapped strangers and offered them to their
gods, and if possible a Brahman was obtained as the most suitable
offering. These legends indicate the traditional hostility of the
Gonds to the Hindus, and especially to the Brahmans, by whom they were
at one time much oppressed and ousted from their lands. According to
tradition, a Gond Raja of Garha-Mandla, Madhkur Shah, had treacherously
put his elder brother to death. Divine vengeance overtook him and he
became afflicted with chronic pains in the head. No treatment was of
avail, and he was finally advised that the only means of appeasing
a justly incensed deity was to offer his own life. He determined
to be burnt inside the trunk of the sacred pipal tree, and a hollow
trunk sufficiently dry for the purpose having been found at Deogarh,
twelve miles from Mandla, he shut himself up in it and was burnt to
death. The story is interesting as showing how the neurotic or other
pains, which are the result of remorse for a crime, are ascribed to
the vengeance of a divine providence.