294 



PHYSICAL HISTORY OF MAN. 



and a literature of their own: and yet, they not only eat their parents, 

 (a custom among other East Indian tribes, and mentioned even by He- 

 rodotus) ; but they seem literally, to devour them alive : 



" Marsden,* confines their cannibalism to two cases, that of persons 

 condemned for crimes, and that of prisoners of war ; but they them- 

 selves declare, that they frequently eat their own relations, when aged 

 and infirm ; and that, not so much to gratify their appetite, as to per- 

 form a pious ceremony. Thus when a man becomes infirm and weary 

 of the world, he is said to invite his own children to eat him, in the 

 season when salt and limes are cheapest. He then ascends a tree, 

 round which his friends and offspring assemble, and as they shake 

 the tree, join in a funeral dirge, the import of which is, ' The season 

 is come, the fruit is ripe, and it must descend.' The victim descends, 

 and those that are nearest and dearest to him deprive him of life, and 

 devour his remains in a solemn banquet." 



Major Canning states,t "that during his residence at Tappanooly, 

 (1814), in the heart of the Batta country, he omitted no opportunity 

 of making the most minute inquiries" on the subject of their canni- 

 balism: "all of which tended, not only fully to corroborate the reality 

 of the practice, but that it is much more frequent than is generally 

 imagined, and carried on in a manner even more savage than is re- 

 lated by Mr. Marsden. The following are the questions put by me 

 to a native chief, selected indiscriminately from an assembly of seve- 

 ral, collected on some particular occasion at the house of the officiating 

 resident at Tappanooly, and his answers : 



Q. " I understand the practice of eating prisoners taken in war, 

 also malefactors convicted of certain crimes, is prevalent in the Batta 

 country ; were you ever personally present at such a repast?" 



A. " The custom you mention is prevalent throughout the Batta 

 country, and I have been more than once present when it has been 

 put in practice." 



Q. " Describe what takes place on such occasions." 



A. " Three posts are fixed in the ground ; to the middle one, the 

 body of the prisoner or criminal is made fast, while his arms and legs 

 are extended to the two others. (The narrator and other chiefs pre- 

 sent, here simultaneously made with their arms and legs, the figure 

 of St. Andrew's cross.) On a signal being given, every one entitled 



* See Leyden, Asiatic Researches, vol. x. p. 202. 



t Malacca Observer, 1827 ; cited, as also the preceding extract, from Moore's Papers 

 on the Indian Archipelago. 



