496 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



was not merely "daintily fed and kindly treated/' but was also 

 regarded by the Kandhs themselves in the light of a god or divine 

 personage. Indeed, Kandhs in distress often sold their own chil- 

 dren for victims, " considering the beatification of their souls cer- 

 tain, and their death for the benefit of mankind the most honor- 

 able possible." " The victims," says Mr. Frazer, "being regarded 

 as consecrated beings, were treated with extreme affection mingled 

 with deference, and were welcomed wherever they went. A me- 

 riah youth, on attaining maturity, was generally given a wife who 

 was herself usually a meriah or victim, and with her he received 

 a portion of land and farm stock. . . . The periodical sacrifices 

 were generally arranged by tribes and divisions of tribes, so that 

 each head of a family was enabled once a year to procure a shred 

 of flesh for his fields, generally about the time when his chief crop 

 was laid down." * 



Still more striking is the account of the way in which bits of 

 the body were disposed of after the sacrifice. " Flesh cut from 

 the victim was instantly taken home by the persons who had been 

 deputed by each village to bring it. To secure its rapid arrival 

 it was sometimes forwarded by relays of men, and conveyed with 

 postal fleetness fifty or sixty miles. In each village, all who 

 stayed at home fasted rigidly until the flesh arrived. The bearer 

 deposited it in the place of public assembly, where it was received 

 by the priest and the heads of families. The priest divided it 

 into two portions, one of which he offered to the earth goddess by 

 burying it in a hole in the ground, with his back turned, and 

 without looking ; then each man added a little earth to bury it, 

 and the priest poured water on the spot from a full gourd." 

 (Notice here the simulation of burial, the formation o"f a tumu- 

 lus, and the pouring of libations.) " The other portion of flesh 

 he divided into as many shares as there were heads of houses 

 present. Each head of a house rolled his shred of flesh in leaves 

 and buried it in his favorite field, placing it in the earth behind 

 his back, and without looking." f The remainder of the body — 

 head, bones, and bowels — was afterward burned on a funeral pile. 

 The ashes were scattered over the fields, laid as paste over the 

 houses and granaries, or mixed with the new corn to preserve it 

 from insects. Here we would seem to have the superposition of a 

 custom derived from cremation on a still earlier rite derived from 

 burial and the formation of the barrow. 



Of all these ceremonies, Mr. Frazer rightly remarks that they 

 can not be explained as merely parts of a propitiatory sacrifice. 

 The burial of the flesh by each householder in his own fields im- 



* Frazer, vbi supra, vol. i, p. 385, quoting Macpherson, Memorials of Service in India, 

 p. 115. f The Golden Bough, vol. i, p. 385 



