Page:Frazer (1890) The Golden Bough (IA goldenboughstudy01fraz).djvu/246

224 Thus, according to an old traveller, in the province of Quilacare “There is a Gentile house of prayer, in which there is an idol which they hold in great account, and every twelve years they celebrate a great feast to it, whither all the Gentiles go as to a jubilee. This temple possesses many lands and much revenue; it is a very great affair. This province has a king over it; who has not more than twelve years to reign from jubilee to jubilee. His manner of living is in this wise, that is to say, when the twelve years are completed, on the day of this feast there assemble together innumerable people, and much money is spent in giving food to Bramans. The king has a wooden scaffolding made, spread over with silken hangings; and on that day he goes to bathe at a tank with great ceremonies and sound of music, after that he comes to the idol and prays to it, and mounts on to the scaffolding, and there before all the people he takes some very sharp knives and begins to cut off his nose, and then his ears and his lips and all his members and as much flesh of himself as he can; and he throws it away very hurriedly until so much of his blood is spilled that he begins to faint, and then he cuts his throat himself. And he performs this sacrifice to the idol; and whoever desires to reign other twelve years, and undertake this martyrdom for love of the idol, has to be present looking on at this; and from that place they raise him up as king.”

Formerly the Samorin or King of Calicut, on the Malabar coast, had also to cut his throat in public at the end of a twelve years’ reign. But towards the end of the seventeenth century the rule had been