Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 3.djvu/427

Rh good; that the earth goddess introduced evil into the world; and that these two powers have since conflicted. The non-sacrificing tribes make the supreme deity the great object of their adoration, neglecting the earth goddess. The sacrificing tribes, on the other hand, believe the propitiation of the latter power to be the most necessary worship. Now the tribes which practice female infanticide hold that the sun god, in contemplating the deplorable effects produced by the creation of feminine nature, charged men to bring up only as many females as they could restrain from producing evil to society. This is the first idea upon which the usage is founded. Again, the Khonds believe that souls almost invariably return to animate human forms in the families in which they have been first born and received. But the reception of the soul of an infant into a family is completed only on the performance of the ceremony of naming upon the seventh day after its birth. The death of a female infant, therefore, before that ceremonial of reception, is believed to exclude its soul from the circle of family spirits, diminishing by one the chance of future female births in the family. And, as the first aspiration of every Khond is to have male children, this belief is a powerful incentive to infanticide." Macpherson, during his campaign, came across many villages of about a hundred houses, in which there was not a single female child. In like manner, in 1855, Captain Frye found many Baro Bori Khond villages without a single female child in them. In savage societies, it has been said, sexual unions were generally effected by the violent capture of the woman. By degrees these captures have become friendly ones, and have ended in a peaceful exogamy, retaining the ancient custom only in the ceremonial form. Whereof an excellent example is afforded by the Kondhs,