1876.] Bajendralala Mitra— On Human Sacrifices in Ancient India. 87 



Sir John Maundeville, regarded human ears " sowced in vynegre as a de- 

 lectable dish" j of the Dyaks of Borneo who delight in " head-hunts" ; of some 

 South Eastern Chinese and Japanese of the middle ages, who drank the blood 

 and eat the flesh of their captives, esteeming it the most savoury food in the 

 world ; of the Tartars, Turks, Mongols, Tibetans, Javanese, Sumatras and 

 Andamanese* I need say nothing. The facts are well known ; and however 

 repulsive it may be to our common humanity to be told of the fact, it can- 

 not be denied, that men under certain circumstances of society, do take 

 to human flesh as an article of food. 



That the practice of immolating wives, concubines, and slaves, at first 

 originating from a mistaken sense of the future world and the require- 

 ments of the manes, did lead to associating such slaughter with religion can 

 scarcely be doubted. Dr. Thurnem has put together a large number of 

 instances of this practice, and the curious in such matters will find incon- 

 trovertible proofs on the subject in the thirty-seventh, the thirty- eighth, and 

 the forty-second volumes of the Arehaologia. The cruel rite of Sati must 

 have originated from this cause, though the love and constancy of Hindu 

 women soon gave it a high character for devotion as a voluntary sacrifice. 

 The immolation of twelve Trojan youths, along with two dogs and four 

 horses, on the funeral pyre of Patroclusf belongs to this class ; and Tertul- 

 lian says—" Olim quoniam animas def unctorum humano sanguine propitiari 

 creditum est, captivos vel mali status servos mercati in exsequiis immolabant. 

 Postea placuit impietatem voluptati adumbrare. Ita mortem homicidiis 

 consolabantur."J — It is supposed by some that the broken bones found 

 in the Long Barrows of Great Britain are mostly of persons buried 

 alive along with the individuals to whose honour the barrows were raised. 

 The opinion, however, has, I believe, not been generally accepted by anti- 

 quarians. 



* Col. Yule has collected a large number of facts illustrative of this subject, and 

 I must refer the reader to his note. Marco Polo, 2nd Ed., I. pp. 302 ff. ; II. pp, 245, 

 265, 275, 292. Adverting to Christiandom, he says " The story of King Richard's 

 banquet in presence of Saladin's ambassadors on the head of a Saracen curried (for so it 

 surely was), — 



1 Soden full hastily 

 With powder and with spysory, 

 And with saffron of good colour' 

 fable as it is, is told with a zest that makes one shudder ; but the tale in the Chanson 

 d'Antioche, of how the licentious bands of ragamuffins, who hung on the army of the 

 First Crusade, and were known as the Jufurs, ate the Turks whom they killed at the 

 siege, looks very like an abominable truth, corroborated as it is by the prose chronicle 

 of worse deeds at the ensuing siege of Thorra." Loe. cit. 



t II. XXIII, 239. 



t Tertullian, De Spectaculis, XII. 



f 



