THEIR HUMAN SACRIFICES. 25 Races. marked by a rite, at once the most hateful and PART I. the most precious of any that heathenism can practise the rite of human sacrifice. Hateful, LECT. II. because there can be no more awful blasphemy against the very nature of God, Who is love, than to treat Him as taking delight in the blood of His noblest creature. Precious, as bearing unconscious witness to the heart-truth, so to speak, of Christ's gospel,-that there is no redemption for mankind but in the sacrifice of the Man. Thus the Bheels and other hill tribes of the Vindhya mountains are constantly accused of human sacrifices by the Sanskrit writers of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Such sacrifices were performed in some parts of Gondwana within a recent period. Amongst the Khonds and Sourahs of Orissa they can be hardly yet extinct, or have been at least first attacked only in our days. As to the objects of the rite amongst one of the last-named tribes, the Khonds, we possess full details through the labours of Captain Macpherson. These are so curious, raise so many of the deepest problems of theology, afford lastly such priceless hints as to the capacity for spiritual development of the race to which they relate, that I am sure you will thank me for dwelling upon them at some length. The Khonds, then, of Orissa, a tribe lying on the outskirts of what may almost be called the great Gond people, have a complete religious system, or rather two complete religious systems developed from the same principles. They are divided into two great sects, each of which looks with horror on the practices of the other. Both Races. LECT. II. PART I. acknowledge a self-existing being, the source of good, the creator of all things and persons, whom they term the God of Light or the Sun God,Boora Pennu or Bella Pennu. His first creation and consort was the Earth-goddess, Tari Pennu, the source of evil, who having become jealous of Boora Pennu's intention to create man for happiness and for the creator's service, endeavoured to frustrate this creation, and failing to do so, has spoilt it by the introduction of both physical and moral evil, "sowing the seeds of sin in mankind as in a ploughed field." Here the two sects divide altogether. The one holds that the Earthgoddess, though struggling ever, is vanquished, and is only permitted to strike as the instrument of punishment upon the wicked. These then worship a God of Light, victorious, almighty; associating with him his vanquished consort, and a number of inferior divinities. Offering a fowl with rice and arrack, the priest says: "O Boora Pennu, and O Tari Pennu, and all other gods (naming them). You, O Boora Pennu, created us, giving us the attribute of hunger: thence corn-food was necessary to us, and thence were necessary producing fields. You gave us every seed, and ordered us to use bullocks and to make ploughs, and to plough. Had we not received this art, we could not have performed your worship. Grant the prayers which we now offer. In the morning, we rise before the light to our labour, carrying the seed. Save us from the tiger, and the snake, and from stumbling-blocks. Let the seed appear earth to the eating birds, and stones to the eating animals of the earth. Let the grain spring up suddenly, like a dry stream swelled in a night. Let the earth yield to our ploughshares as wax melts before hot iron. Let the baked clods melt like hailstones. Let our ploughs spring through the furrows like the recoil of a bent tree. Let there be such a return from our seed, that so much shall fall and be neglected in the fields, and so much on the roads in carrying it home, that when we shall go out next year to sow, the paths and the fields shall look like a young THE KHONDS AND THEIR SECTS. 27 cornfield. From the first times we have lived by your favour. Let us continue to receive it. Remember that the increase of our produce is the increase of your worship, and that its diminution must be the diminution of your rites." The other sect, again, hold that Tari was victorious over Boora as respects this life; that she, and not he, was the introducer of cultivation and of the arts; but that she did this, not as the Light-God, out of the fulness of her good will, but on one dread condition, the offering up of human sacrifices, which are her daily food. Hence the practice of what are called the Meriah sacrifices, within the last few years only stopped, or attempted to be stopped, by the efforts of the English. They took place, not only periodically or on special occasions, on behalf of whole tribes or villages, but even on behalf of individuals, seeking to avert Tari's wrath. The victim must either have been bought, or born a victim, or consecrated in childhood by his father or natural guardian. He is looked upon during life as sacred, is loaded with honour and kindness. He sometimes is suffered to marry, to die in peace; but his children remain subject to the same lot. When his sacrifice is called for, it is performed according to a certain dramatic ritual, in which the victim himself is impersonated,the most awfully beautiful which I have ever met with, and far surpassing, to my mind, the pathos of the Greek tragic poets in kindred situ ations. The version which Captain Macpherson gives is unfortunately too long for extraction here; it will be found at length in the second part of the Royal Asiatic Society's Journal for 1852, vol. xiii. In the introductory part, the priest relates the PART I. Races. LECT. II. PART I. Races. LECT. II. origin of human sacrifice, in the shedding of the blood of the Earth-goddess, which began to make the earth firm from soft mud that it was. Since its institution -the world has been happy and rich, both in the portion which belongs to the Khonds, and the portion which belongs to Rajas [Hindoos]. And society, with its relations of father and mother, and wife and child, and the bonds between ruler and subject arose, and there came into use cows, bullocks and buffaloes, sheep, and poultry. Then came also into use the trees and the hills, the pastures and the grass, and irrigated and dry fields, and the seeds suitable to the hills and to the valleys, and iron, and ploughshares, and arrows, and axes, and the juice of the palm-tree, and love between the sons and daughters of the people, making new households. In this manner did the necessity for the rite of sacrifice arise." Observe the universal character which this marvellous ritual assigns to the sacrifice. We find in it such passages as these :—that the ancestors of the Khonds "at first knew only the form of worship necessary for themselves, not that necessary for the whole world," that "thenceforth the whole burden of the worship of the world has lain upon us, and we discharge it." Addressing the victim, the priest tells him that the Earth-goddess demands a sacrifice; that it is necessary to the world; the tiger begins to rage, the snake to poison, fevers and every pain afflict the people; shall he alone be exempt from evil? when he shall have given repose to the world he will become a god.-The victim asks, if they have no enemies, no useless or dangerous members of the community, to sacrifice instead of him? He is told, that such sacrifices would be of no avail; the souls of such would never become gods. His parents gave him "as freely as one gives light from a fire, let him blame them." THE RITUAL OF HUMAN SACRIFICE. 29 Races. Did he share the price, he asks, did he agree to PART I. the sale? No one remembers his mother's womb, or the taste of his mother's milk; and LECT. II. he considered them his parents. "When did you conceive this fraud, this wickedness to destroy me? You, O my father, and you, and you, and you, -O my fathers, do not destroy me.' The village chief, or his representative, now answers: "This usage is delivered down to us from the first people of the first time. They practised it. The people of the middle time omitted it. The earth became soft. An order re-established the rite. Oh, child, we must destroy you. Forgive us. You will become a god." The victim declares that he knew nothing of their intention. He appeals to the trees he planted, the houses on which he laboured, the cattle which he has tended. He has toiled for them with all his might.-He is answered that he should have known of his doom; this and that circumstance are recalled, by which he might have done so. Let him curse his parents; they will curse them with him.-Lastly, he turns to the priest and curses him. The priest, or Janni, declares that "The Deity created the world, and everything that lives; and I am his minister and representative. God made you, the mullicko (village-chief) bought you, and I sacrifice you. The virtue of your death is not yours, but mine, but it will be attributed to you through me. "The victim. My curse be upon the man who, while he did not share in my price, is first at my death. Let the world ever be upon one side while he is upon the other. Let him, destitute, and without stored food, hope to live only through the distresses of others. Let him be the poorest I wretch alive. Let his wife and children think him foul. |