Castes and Tribes of Southern India. Vol. 3 of 7Thurston, Edgar
History
Castes and Tribes of Southern India. Vol. 3 of 7
Thurston, Edgar
Caste -- India, South; Ethnology -- India, South; India, South -- Social life and customs; Tribes -- India, South
You have been called,
ensnared by the Domba. What can I do, even if you are my child? You
are sold for a pot of food.
The ethnological section of the Madras Museum received a few years ago
a very interesting relic in the shape of a human (Meriah) sacrifice
post from Baligudu in Ganjam. This post, which was fast being reduced
to a mere shell by white-ants, is, I believe, the only one now in
existence. It was brought by Colonel Pickance, who was Assistant
Superintendent of Police, and set up in the ground near the gate of
the reserve Police barracks. The veteran members of a party of Kondhs,
who were brought to Madras for the purpose of performing before the
Prince and Princess of Wales in 1906, became wildly excited when they
came across this relic of their former barbarous custom.
"The best known case," Mr. Frazer writes, [164] "of human sacrifices
systematically offered to ensure good crops is supplied by the Khonds
or Kandhs. 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."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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