Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 3.djvu/424

KONDH The hitherto shouting and madly revolving throng stopped their gyrations round the stupefied beast, too much exhausted and frightened to offer any resistance, and, falling on its neck and body, began to smother it with caresses and endearments, and, to a low plaintive air, crooned and wailed over it, the following dirge, of which I append a rude translation. Tradition says that they used to sing it, with slight variations, over their human victims before the sacrifice: —


 * Blame us not, O buffalo!
 * Thus for sacrificing thee,
 * For our fathers have ordained
 * This ancient mystery.


 * We have bought thee with a price,
 * Have paid for thee all thy worth.
 * What blame can rest upon us.
 * Who save our land from dearth?


 * Famine stares us in the face.
 * Parched are our fields, and dry,
 * Death looks in at ev'ry door,
 * For food our young ones cry.


 * Thadi Pennoo veils her face.
 * Propitiate me, she cries,
 * Give to me of flesh and blood,
 * A willing sacrifice.


 * That where'er its blood is shed,
 * On land, or field, or hill,
 * There the gen'rous grain may spring.
 * So ye may eat your fill.


 * Then be glad, O buffalo!
 * Willing sacrifice to be,
 * Soon in Thadi's meadows green.
 * Thou shalt brouse eternally.

After the Khonds had been chanting this sacrificial hymn for some time, the buffalo was untied from the carved