Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/188

 156 Biill-baitino\ Bull-racing, Bull-fights.

ground up to its shoulders, and then drive their leading bullocks over the unfortunate victim. In proportion as the bullocks thoroughly trampled the child to death, their belief in a successful journey increased. This seems to be a case of augury, not of human sacrifice. Lieutenant- Colonel W. E. Marshall discussed the question of infanticide with a member of the Toda tribe. The latter replied : " Those tell lies who say we laid it [the child] before the opening of the buffalo pen, so that it might be run over and killed by the animals ! We never did such things ! and it is all nonsense that we drowned it in bufTalo's milk ! " Marshall quotes an official letter addressed by the Collector of Coimbatore to the Secretary to the Government of Fort St, Geroge in 1856, in which he stated : " The mode of destroying the infant, if a female, is by exposing it the next morning ^. after the birth] at the door of the cattle kraal ; when first opened, the whole herd, half wild, rush over and annihilate the wretched infant — the Todas never lifting their own hand against it." ^^

This is probably the story to which the Bishop of Madras refers : "I have been told that among the Todas of the Nilgiri hills it was formerly the custom to place female children, whom it was desired to rear, on the ground at the entrance of the mand, and drive buffaloes over them. If they survived this ordeal, they were allowed to live." *^ This differs from the account quoted by Marshall, which represents it as a method of infanticide, and the Toda who repudiated the practice, described in a very matter- of-fact way how female infants were killed by closing the nostrils, ears and mouth with a cloth. Neither Dr. Rivers nor Mr. Thurston seems to corroborate the existence of the custom of killing infants by allowing them to be trampled by cattle, and it appears to be based on some misappre- hension.

" \V. E. Marshall, A Phrenologist amongst the Todas, 195. ■»2(9/. cit. 137.