VII
HUMAN SACRIFICE
"The best known case," Mr Frazer writes,[1] "of human sacrifices systematically offered to ensure good crops, is supplied by the Khonds or Kandhs, a Dravidian race in Bengal and Madras. 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 diseases 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, a 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."
In 1837, Mr Russell, in a report on the districts entrusted to his control, wrote as follows[2]:—
"The ceremonies attending the barbarous rite (Kondh human sacrifice) vary in different parts of the country. In the Māliahs of Goomsur, the sacrifice is offered annually, to Thadha Pennoo, under the effigy of a bird intended to
- ↑ "The Golden Bough," 1900, ii. 241 et seq. Bibliography of human sacrifice among the Kondhs, see Thurston, "Castes and Tribes of Southern India," 1909, iii. 412-5.
- ↑ "Selections from the Records of the Government of India," No. v., Suppression of human sacrifice and infanticide, 1854. The subject of Meriah sacrifice is also dealt with by F. E. Penny, in her novel entitled "Sacrifice," 1910.
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