Thus, from the conception that sins and curses are contagious it follows that an innocent person may have to suffer for the sin of another. His suffering does not necessarily relieve the sinner from punishment; sin, like an infectious disease, may spread without vacating the seat of infection. But, as we have seen, it may also be transferred, and sin-transference involves vicarious suffering. At the same time, this kind of vicarious suffering must not be confounded with vicarious expiatory sacrifice. As a general rule, the scapegoat is driven or cast away, not killed. The exceptions to this rule seem to be due to two different causes. On the one hand, the scapegoat may be chased to death, or perhaps be pushed over a precipice,[227] for the sake of ridding the community as {62} effectively as possible of the evils loaded on the victim. Thus the Bhotiyás of Juhár take a dog, make him drunk, "and having fed him with sweetmeats, lead him round the village and let him loose. They then chase and kill him with sticks and stones, and believe that by so doing no disease or misfortune will visit the village during the year."[228] On the other hand, the transference of evil may be combined with a sacrifice. But of such a combination only a few instances are recorded, and most of them are ambiguous. Considering further that in these cases, or at least in the best known of them, the act of transference takes place _after_ the victim has been killed, it seems to me extremely probable that we have here to do with a fusion of two distinct rites into one, and that the victim is not offered up as a sacrifice in its capacity of a scapegoat, but, once sacrificed, has been made use of as a conductor for all the evils with which the people are beset. [Footnote 227: According to the Mishna, the Hebrew scapegoat was not allowed to go free in the wilderness, but was killed by being pushed over a precipice (Robertson Smith, _Religion of the Semites_, p. 418). See also the ambiguous passage in Servius, _In Virgilii Aeneidos_, iii. 57.] [Footnote 228: Atkinson, 'Notes on the History of Religion in the Himálaya of the N.W. Provinces,' in _Jour. Asiatic Soc. Bengal_, liii. pt. i. 62.]