Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/521

455 with loud shouts marched, as before, around its area, driving the buffaloes with blows before them. Suddenly, two of them sprang upon one of the buffaloes, and each seizing it by a horn, threw their whole weight upon its neck, hanging with one hand to the horn, while, with the other, they grasped the cartilage of its nose. The half-maddened and powerful beast plunged and tossed its head, but others leaped upon it, while others still, with loud yells, beat it with their clubs. The buffalo drove among the herd and against the stone wall, plunging and tossing its head to disengage its assailants; but it was in strong hands, and finally was led and driven without the enclosure to the place where lay the relics of the dead. Forcing its nostrils down to the mantle, they held it while the sacrificer, with the blunt end of a small axe, struck it in the forehead. The huge beast quivered and fell, breathing out its life upon the relics of the dead, whose spirit it was supposed to accompany into the future world.

One after another, seven buffaloes were thus overpowered and slain before the dead. While the slaughtered beasts were lying thus upon the green, the mourners drew near, and seating themselves upon the ground, began to wail.