In India, once more, the Gonds, like the Khonds, kidnapped Brahman boys, and kept them as victims to be sacrificed on various occasions. At sowing and reaping, after a triumphal procession, one of the lads was killed by being punctured with a poisoned arrow. His blood was then sprinkled over the ploughed field or the ripe crop, and his flesh was sacramentally devoured. The last point again will call at a later stage for further examination. I will detail no more such instances (out of the thousands that exist) for fear of seeming tedious. But the interpretation I put upon the facts is this. Originally, men noticed that food-plants grew abundantly from the laboured and well-manured soil of graves. They observed that this richness sprang from a coincidence of three factors--digging, a sacred dead body, and seeds of foodstuffs. In time, they noted that if you dug wide enough and scattered seed far enough, a single corpse was capable of fertilising a considerable area. The grave grew into the field or garden. But they still thought it necessary to bury some one in the field; and most of the evidence shows that they regarded this victim as a divine personage; that they considered him the main source of growth or fertility; and that they endeavoured to deserve his favour by treating him well during the greater part of his lifetime. For in many of the accounts it is expressly stated {288}that the intended victim was treated as a god or as a divine king, and was supplied with every sort of luxury up to the moment of his immolation. In process of time, the conception of the field as differing from the grave grew more defined, and the large part borne by seed in the procedure was more fully recognised. Even so, however, nobody dreamed of sowing the seed alone without the body of a victim. Both grain and flesh or blood came to be regarded alike as “seed”: that is to say, the concurrence of the two was considered necessary to produce the desired effect of germination and fertility. Till a very late period, either the actual sacrifice or some vague remnant of it remained as an essential part of cultivation. Mr. Frazer’s pages teem with such survivals in modern folk-custom. From his work and from other sources, I will give a few instances of these last dying relics of the primitive superstition.