The following account of the well-known system of human sacrifice,
formerly in vogue among the Khonds, is contained in Sir James Frazer's
Golden Bough, having been compiled by him from the accounts of Major
Macpherson and Major-General John Campbell, two of the officers
deputed to suppress it:
"The best known case of human sacrifices systematically offered
to ensure good crops is supplied by the Khonds or Kandhs, another
Dravidian race in Bengal. Our knowledge of them is derived from the
accounts written by British officers who, forty or fifty years ago,
were engaged in putting them down. The sacrifices were offered to the
Earth-Goddess, Tari Pennu or Bera Pennu, and were believed to ensure
good crops and immunity from all disease and accidents. In particular
they were considered necessary in the cultivation of turmeric, the
Khonds arguing that the turmeric could not have a deep red colour
without the shedding of blood. The victim or Meriah was acceptable
to the goddess only if he had been purchased, or had been born a
victim--that is the son of a victim father--or had been devoted as
a child by his father or guardian. Khonds in distress often sold
their children for victims, 'considering the beatification of their
souls certain, and their death, for the benefit of mankind, the
most honourable possible.' A man of the Panua (Pan) tribe was once
seen to load a Khond with curses, and finally to spit in his face,
because the Khond had sold for a victim his own child, whom the Panua
had wished to marry. A party of Khonds, who saw this, immediately
pressed forward to comfort the seller of his child, saying, 'Your
child has died that all the world may live, and the Earth-Goddess
herself will wipe that spittle from your face.' The victims were
often kept for years before they were sacrificed. Being regarded as
consecrated beings, they were treated with extreme affection, mingled
with deference, and were welcomed wherever they went. A Meriah youth,
on attaining maturity, was generally given a wife, who was herself
usually a Meriah or victim, and with her he received a portion of land
and farm-stock. Their offspring were also victims. Human sacrifices
were offered to the Earth-Goddess by tribes, branches of tribes,
or villages, both at periodical festivals and on extraordinary
occasions. The periodical sacrifices were generally so arranged by
tribes and divisions of tribes that each head of a family was enabled,
at least once a year, to procure a shred of flesh for his fields,
generally about the time when his chief crop was laid down. The mode
of performing these tribal sacrifices was as follows. Ten or twelve
days before the sacrifice, the victim was devoted by cutting off his
hair, which, until then, had been kept unshorn. Crowds of men and
women assembled to witness the sacrifice; none might be excluded,
since the sacrifice was declared to be for all mankind. It was
preceded by several days of wild revelry and gross debauchery. On
the day before the sacrifice the victim, dressed in a new garment,
was led forth from the village in solemn procession, with music and
dancing, to the Meriah grove, a clump of high forest trees standing a
little way from the village and untouched by the axe. Here they tied
him to a post, which was sometimes placed between two plants of the
sankissar shrub. He was then anointed with oil, ghee and turmeric,
and adorned with flowers; and 'a species of reverence, which it is
not easy to distinguish from adoration,' was paid to him throughout
the day. A great struggle now arose to obtain the smallest relic
from his person; a particle of the turmeric paste with which he was
smeared, or a drop of his spittle, was esteemed of sovereign virtue,
especially by the women. The crowd danced round the post to music,
and addressing the Earth said, 'O God, we offer this sacrifice to you;
give us good crops, seasons, and health.'
"On the last morning the orgies, which had been scarcely interrupted
during the night, were resumed and continued till noon, when they
ceased, and the assembly proceeded to consummate the sacrifice. The
victim was again anointed with oil, and each person touched the
anointed part, and wiped the oil on his own head. In some places they
took the victim in procession round the village, from door to door,
where some plucked hair from his head, and others begged for a drop of
his spittle, with which they anointed their heads. As the victim might
not be bound nor make any show of resistance, the bones of his arms
and, if necessary, his legs were broken; but often this precaution
was rendered unnecessary by stupefying him with opium. The mode of
putting him to death varied in different places. One of the commonest
modes seems to have been strangulation, or squeezing to death. The
branch of a green tree was cleft several feet down the middle; the
victim's neck (in other places, his chest) was inserted in the cleft,
which the priest, aided by his assistants, strove with all his force to
close. Then he wounded the victim slightly with his axe, whereupon the
crowd rushed at the wretch and cut the flesh from the bones, leaving
the head and bowels untouched. Sometimes he was cut up alive. In Chinna
Kimedy he was dragged along the fields, surrounded by the crowd, who,
avoiding his head and intestines, hacked the flesh from his body with
their knives till he died. Another very common mode of sacrifice in the
same district was to fasten the victim to the proboscis of a wooden
elephant, which revolved on a stout post, and, as it whirled round,
the crowd cut the flesh from the victim while life remained. In some
villages Major Campbell found as many as fourteen of these wooden
elephants, which had been used at sacrifices. [515] In one district
the victim was put to death slowly by fire. A low stage was formed,
sloping on either side like a roof; upon it they laid the victim,
his limbs wound round with cords to confine his struggles. Fires were
then lighted and hot brands applied, to make him roll up and down the
slopes of the stage as long as possible; for the more tears he shed
the more abundant would be the supply of rain. Next day the body was
cut to pieces.
"The flesh cut from the victim was instantly taken home by the persons
who had been deputed by each village to bring it. To secure its rapid
arrival it was sometimes forwarded by relays of men, and conveyed with
postal fleetness fifty or sixty miles. In each village all who stayed
at home fasted rigidly until the flesh arrived. The bearer deposited it
in the place of public assembly, where it was received by the priest
and the heads of families. The priest divided it into two portions,
one of which he offered to the Earth-Goddess by burying it in a hole
in the ground with his back turned, and without looking. Then each
man added a little earth to bury it, and the priest poured water on
the spot from a hill gourd. The other portion of flesh he divided
into as many shares as there were heads of houses present. Each head
of a house rolled his shred of flesh in leaves and buried it in his
favourite field, placing it in the earth behind his back without
looking. In some places each man carried his portion of flesh to the
stream which watered his fields, and there hung it on a pole. For
three days thereafter no house was swept; and, in one district, strict
silence was observed, no fire might be given out, no wood cut, and no
strangers received. The remains of the human victim (namely, the head,
bowels and bones) were watched by strong parties the night after the
sacrifice, and next morning they were burned along with a whole sheep,
on a funeral pile. The ashes were scattered over the fields, laid as
paste over the houses and granaries, or mixed with the new corn to
preserve it from insects. Sometimes, however, the head and bones were
buried, not burnt. After the suppression of the human sacrifices,
inferior victims were substituted in some places; for instance, in
the capital of Chinna Kimedy a goat took the place of a human victim.
"In these Khond sacrifices the Meriahs are represented by our
authorities as victims offered to propitiate the Earth-Goddess. But
from the treatment of the victims both before and after death
it appears that the custom cannot be explained as merely a
propitiatory sacrifice. A part of the flesh certainly was offered
to the Earth-Goddess, but the rest of the flesh was buried by each
householder in his fields, and the ashes of the other parts of the
body were scattered over the fields, laid as paste on the granaries,
or mixed with the new corn. These latter customs imply that to the
body of the Meriah there was ascribed a direct or intrinsic power
of making the crops to grow, quite independent of the indirect
efficacy which it might have as an offering to secure the good-will
of the deity. In other words, the flesh and ashes of the victim were
believed to be endowed with a magical or physical power of fertilising
the land. The same intrinsic power was ascribed to the blood and
tears of the Meriah, his blood causing the redness of the turmeric,
and his tears producing rain; for it can hardly be doubted that,
originally at least, the tears were supposed to bring down the rain,
not merely to prognosticate it. Similarly the custom of pouring water
on the buried flesh of the Meriah was no doubt a rain-charm. Again,
magical power as an attribute of the Meriah appears in the sovereign
virtue believed to reside in anything that came from his person, as his
hair or spittle. The ascription of such power to the Meriah indicates
that he was much more than a mere man sacrificed to propitiate a
deity. Once more, the extreme reverence paid him points to the same
conclusion. Major Campbell speaks of the Meriah as 'being regarded
as something more than mortal,' and Major Macpherson says: 'A species
of reverence, which it is not easy to distinguish from adoration, is
paid to him.' In short, the Meriah appears to have been regarded as
divine. As such, he may originally have represented the Earth-Goddess,
or perhaps a deity of vegetation, though in later times he came to
be regarded rather as a victim offered to a deity than as himself an
incarnate god. This later view of the Meriah as a victim rather than
a divinity may perhaps have received undue emphasis from the European
writers who have described the Khond religion. Habituated to the
later idea of sacrifice as an offering made to a god for the purpose
of conciliating his favour, European observers are apt to interpret
all religious slaughter in this sense, and to suppose that wherever
such slaughter takes place, there must necessarily be a deity to whom
the carnage is believed by the slayers to be acceptable. Thus their
preconceived ideas unconsciously colour and warp their descriptions
of savage rites." [516]