Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/209

 '" Hook- Swinging'' in India. 183

are then not unlikely to meet with rudimentary forms of it among the Dravidians, and, if among them we do succeed in finding what upon intrinsic grounds we suspect to be such, the fact that we do find them there and not elsewhere will greatly strengthen our suspicions. But, apart from the fact that the ceremony in question is in all probability an aboriginal one, arc there other and intrinsic grounds for supposing that it is traceable to or a commutation of a form of human sacrifice? This is the question I now proceed to consider.

The classic human sacrifice of the aboriginal tribes of India is, of course, the Mcriali of the Kandhs, so well- known and elsewhere so fully described. ^^ Although there is room for difference of opinion in regard to the interpre- tation of certain of its features, it is not necessary to my purpose that I should touch upon controversial matter. Whatever may have been its ultimate origin, whatever may have been the precise nature of the thought under- lying it or the feelings by which it was prompted, it will, I think, be generally admitted that it was not always, everywhere, and of absolute necessity in the eyes of its performers a fertility sacrifice pure and simple ; in other words, the people who offered a McriaJi did not always do so with the avowed object of influencing the crops and only the crops. "Human sacrifices," we read, "were offered to the Earth Goddess by tribes, branches of tribes, or villages, both at periodical festivals and on extraordinary occasions."^^ Again, " besides these periodical (meriah)

^^ E.g.^ J. G. Frazer, Spirits of the Corn and Wild, vol. i., pp. 245 tt seq. ; E. Thurston, Ethnographic Notes in Southern India, pp. 510 et seq. ; E. Westermarck, The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, vol. i., pp. 444-7 ; together with original authorities referred to and quoted by these writers, e.g. Major Macpherson. An account of the religion of the Kandhs appears in The fournal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. xiii., No. 2.

^^J. G. Frazer, Spirits of the Corn and Wild, vol. i., p. 246; on the authority of Major S .C. Macpherson, Memorials of Service in India, and Major- General John Campbell, Wild Tribes of Khondistan.