recrudescence of it if the pressure of our administration were relaxed. [Human sacrifice among the Banjâras of the Dakkhin.] 7. Up to our own day the Banjâras of the Dakkhin practised human sacrifice. General Sleeman [226] tells a story that the fort and part of the town of Sâgar stands on a wall said to have been built by a Banjâra. He was told that the lake would continue dry until he consented to sacrifice his daughter and her affianced husband. He built them up in a shrine and the waters rose, but no Banjâra will touch the water. Their women, even to the present day, are notorious for necromancy. They are, according to Sir Alfred Lyall, [227] “terribly vexed by witchcraft, to which their wandering and precarious existence especially exposes them in the shape of fever, rheumatism, and dysentery. Solemn enquiries are still held in the wild jungles where these people camp out like gypsies, and many an unlucky hag has been strangled by the sentence of their secret tribunals.” [Religion of the Dakkhin Banjâras.] 8. According to Mr. Cumberlege, “the Chârans are all deists. There are Hindu gods they worship as having been holy men; but they only acknowledge one God, and look on Guru Nânak as the propagandist of their religion; Guru Nânak is supreme; but they worship Bâlaji, Mariyâi (Mahâ Kâli), Tulja Devi, Siva Bhaiya, Mitthu Bhûkiya, and Sati. There are smaller gods worshipped also, but the above are the only gods worshipped by the Chârans of Berâr. They have heard of Siva Dâs, but do not worship him as the men of the Telinga country and Central Provinces do. The reason is seen at a glance. Ours is the Râthaur country, those parts belong mostly to the Burthiya class; in fact the Telinga country is entirely theirs, and Siva Dâs was a Burthiya, not a Râthaur, I believe. The oath most sacred to them is taken in the name of Siva Bhaiya, a holy man who resided at Pohora, in the Wûn District, where there are still temples, I believe, to Siva Bhaiya and Mariyâi, and where a nephew of Siva Bhaiya, by name Sûka Bhaiya, still officiates. There are numbers of Bhagats, of varied celebrity, to whom they go on any serious difficulty; otherwise their own Nâiks, or the Nâik to whom the former is subordinate, adjudicates.”