Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 8.djvu/208

KHONDS. stones, a hog is killed in sacrifice, and the blood being allowed to flow into a pit prepared for the purpose, the Meria, who has been previously made senseless from intoxication, is seized and thrown in, and his face pressed down till he is suffocated in the bloody mire. The zani then cuts a piece of flesh from his body and buries it near the village idol, as an offering to the earth. All the people then follow his example, but carry the bloody prize to their own villages, where part of the flesh is buried near the village idol, and part on the boundaries of the village. The head of the victim remains unmutilated, and with the bare bones is buried in the bloody pit.

"After the horrid ceremony has been completed, a buffalo calf is brought to the post, and his four feet having been cut off, is left there till the following clay. omen dressed in male attire, and armed as men, then drink, dance, and sing round the spot, the calf is killed and eaten, and the zani dismissed with a present of rice, and a hog or calf. Of the many ways in which the unhappy victim is destroyed, that just described is perhaps the least cruel, as in some places the flesh is cut off while the unfortunate creature is still alive."

Accounts of the sacrifice differed, under relation of the rites by members of different tribes. In one place the victim was placed between planks, and pressed to death, the body being afterwards cut in two. Again, the flesh was cut from the living being; and again, the victim was merely killed and buried. But it was the flesh that was the chief desire. How could turmeric have a good colour unless it had blood? how could the people be spared without sacrifice? and the like, were pleaded by them; but Mr. Russell was of opinion that the abolition of the rite must of necessity be a very gradual process. "We must not," he writes, "allow the cruelty of the practice to blind us to the consequence of too rash a zeal in our endeavours to repress it. The superstitions of ages cannot be eradicated in a day. Any measure of coercion would arouse the jealousy of a whole race possessing the strongest feeling of clansbip, and whatever their common dissensions, likely to make common cause in support of a common religion."

Mr. Russell was right. War had no terror for the Khonds, themselves a warlike race, and the country was well nigh impracticable. Captain Campbell therefore was sent among them, and by his firmness, tact, and self-reliance, gradually effected the change required. He made roads, opened the hills in various directions, and introduced time lowest elements of civilization. His mission began in 1837, and did not end till health broke down finally in 1854; when for some time previously human sacrifice had ceased to exist. He had proved to the people that fortune did not ensue when human sacrifice was discontinued, and the sacrifice of animals substituted, and on one occasion the spokesman at a sacrifice being told to say what lie pleased, lie cried out "Do not be angry with us, O goddess, for giving you the blood of beasts instead of human