When a man has been killed by a tiger they have a ceremony called
'Breaking the string,' or the connection which they believe the
animal establishes with a family on having tasted its blood. Otherwise
they think that the tiger would gradually kill off all the remaining
members of the family of his victim, and when he had finished with
them would proceed to other families in the same village. This curious
belief is no doubt confirmed by the tiger's habit of frequenting the
locality of a village from which it has once obtained a victim, in
the natural expectation that others may be forthcoming from the same
source. In this ceremony the village Baiga or medicine-man is painted
with red ochre and soot to represent the tiger, and proceeds to the
place where the victim was carried off. Having picked up some of the
blood-stained earth in his mouth, he tries to run away to the jungle,
but the spectators hold him back until he spits out the earth. This
represents the tiger being forced to give up his victim. The Baiga
then ties a string round all the members of the dead man's family
standing together; he places some grain before a fowl saying, 'If
my charm has worked, eat of this'; and as soon as the fowl has eaten
some grain the Baiga states that his efforts have been successful and
the attraction of the man-eater has been broken; he then breaks the
string and all the party return to the village. A similar ceremony
is performed when a man has died of snake-bite.