AN AWFUL SACRIFICE. 
1 23 
twenty-eighth day after his adventure in the bazaar, 
he died. 
Similar instances of superstitious belief acting fa- 
tally are not uncommon in India, and Colonel Tod, in 
his “ Annals of Rajasthan,” mentions a circumstance 
of this kind so remarkable that I shall offer no apo- 
logy for inserting it here. Oodi Sing, known from 
his extreme obesity by the name of the fat Rajah, 
had fallen in love with the virgin daughter of a 
Brahmin. 
“ It was on the Rajah’s return from court to his 
native land that he beheld the damsel, and deter- 
mined, notwithstanding the sacred function of her 
father and his own obligations as the dispenser of 
law and justice, to obtain the object of his admiration. 
The Brahmin was an Aya Punta, or votary of Aya 
Mata, whose shrine is at Bai Bhilara. The sectarians 
of Maroo, very different from the abstinent Brahmins 
of Bengal, eat flesh, drink wine, and share in all the 
common enjoyments of life with the martial spirits 
around them. Whether the scruples of the daughter 
were likely to be overcome by the royal tempter, or 
whether the Rajah threatened force, the memoir does 
not inform us; but as there was no other course by 
which the father could save her from pollution but by 
death, he resolved to make it one of vengeance and 
horror. He dug a sacrificial pit, and having slain 
his daughter, cut her into fragments and mingled 
them with pieces of flesh from his own person, made 
the burnt sacrifice of Aya Mata, and, as the smoke 
and flames ascended, he pronounced an imprecation 
on the Rajah. f Let peace be a stranger to him, and 
