All the world over, savages and semi-civilised people are in the habit of sacrificing human victims, whose bodies are buried in the field with the seed of corn or other bread-stuffs. Often enough the victim’s blood is mixed with the grain in order to fertilise it. The most famous instance is that of the Khonds of Orissa, who chose special victims, known as Meriahs, and offered them up to ensure good harvests. The Meriah was often kept for years before being sacrificed. He was regarded as a consecrated being, and treated with extreme affection, mingled with deference. A Meriah youth, on reaching manhood, was given a wife who was herself a Meriah; their offspring were all brought up as victims. “The periodical sacrifices,” says Mr. Frazer, “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.” On the day of the sacrifice, which was horrible beyond description in its details, the body was cut to pieces, and the flesh hacked from it was instantly taken home by the persons whom each village had deputed to bring it. On arriving at its destination, it was divided by the priest into two portions, one of which he buried in a hole in the ground, with his back turned and without looking {284}at it. Then each man in the village added a little earth to cover it, and the priest poured water over the mimic tumulus. The other portion of the flesh the priest divided into as many shares as there were heads of houses present. Each head of a house buried his shred in his own field, placing it in the earth behind his back without looking. The other remains of the human victim--the head, the bones, and the intestines--were burned on a funeral-pile, and the ashes were scattered over the fields, or mixed with the new corn to preserve it from injury. Every one of these details should be carefully noted. Now, in this case, it is quite clear to me that every field is regarded as essentially a grave; portions of the divine victim are buried in it; his ashes are mixed with the seed; and from the ground thus treated he springs again in the form of corn, or rice, or turmeric. These customs, as Mr. Frazer rightly notes, “imply that to the body of the Meriah there was ascribed a direct or intrinsic power of making the crops to grow. 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.” More than that, it seems to me that the seed itself is not regarded as sufficient to produce a crop: it is the seed buried in the sacred grave with the divine flesh which germinates at last into next year’s foodstuffs.