Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/55

Rh, certified that death was due to inflammation of the lungs. Very likely he had suffered in that way. The local rainfall is very heavy. I have myself known fifty-two inches of rain to have been measured in three days on a coffee estate close by. Rain such as this, accompanied by a howling wind, is, perhaps, likely enough to affect the lungs of people who are almost unclothed, who even in the cosiest corner of their dwelling are only very partially protected from it. It is cold and damp to the last degree during the south-west monsoon in the Wynaad, which lies at an elevation of about 3000 feet above sea level. The autopsy was faulty. Death was certainly due to ôḍikal. I was informed that a victim to ôḍikal never, under any circumstances, lived after the eighth day. Death followed inevitably, and, as a rule, on the sixth or seventh day.

Having made sure of their victim's death, and feeling confident that he dare not, or at all events will not, disclose their names, his tormentors quietly return to their pâḍi. The cock is sacrificed inside the hut, close to, but a little to one side of, the bundle of bamboo strips of which mention has been made already. Rice is cooked, and so is the fowl, and both are eaten. As a preliminary to the sacrifice, it should be said, some two or three of the strips are pegged out in the usual way. It is rather indefinite, but the Muppans appear to believe that in some way their ancestors take possession of their victim as soon as they have treated him to ôḍikal. They have their ancestors "in mind" during the whole affair, and their victim would appear to be considered in the light of a sacrifice to them. But why in this extraordinary manner? It was extracted from them that ôḍikal causes the blood to circulate the wrong way, and thus brings death. But, of course this belief offers no explanation why this peculiar method of taking an enemy's life should be resorted to. Let me add further that, should it by any means whatever become known to the family of the victim that he died by ôḍikal, it is their solemn duty to