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Human Sacrifice in Colonial Central India: Myth, Agency and Representation

January 2006

January 2006

In book: Beyond representation : colonial and postcolonial constructions of Indian identity (pp.19-54)
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Editors: Bates, C

Authors:

Crispin Bates

The University of Edinburgh

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From C. Bates (ed.) Beyond Representation: Colonial and Postcolonial Constructions of

Indian Identity (New Delhi: OUP, 2006).

Human Sacrifice in Colonial Central India:

Myth, Agency and Representation

Crispin Bates

(University of Edinburgh)

The sanguinary nature of early contacts with the tribals, or adivasis, of central India did not bode

well for their future reputation. The first expedition into Bastar by Captain Blunt, in 1795, was

attacked and expelled from the country, from which experience may be traced some of the more

fearful accounts of the savagery of tribal Gonds.i The already established reputations of the

predatory Bhils of Gujarat and the rebellious Santhals and Kols of Bihar also served to colour the

expectations of early travellers in central India. Hindu informants often reported the adivasis to

be practitioners of human sacrifice and this was widely believed, although no evidence of this

was ever uncovered.ii The density of the jungle and the prevalence of malaria further made any

expedition into the interior something to be greatly feared. The very first such expedition, that of

Alexander Elliot and four other officers, who attempted to march a route from Cuttack to Nagpur

and thence to Hoshangabad between August 11th and December 9th 1778, ended in the death of

Elliot and three of the other four. Only one, Thomas, actually made it to Hoshangabad, and on

the return journey was considerably harassed by tigers, robbers and 'a treacherous Naig [sic]'.iii

In later expeditions however expectations were not always confirmed. The large number of

Hindus, including Rajputs and 'agricultural Brahmins' resident in Chhattisgarh and the

surrounding tracts was noted with surprise, and the customs and practices of the Gonds were

discovered to be not always as bizarre as had previously been described. One expedition of the

early 1830's reported:

It has been suspected by many that the Gonds do not scruple to perform human

sacrifices and devour the flesh, but the Hindoo inhabitants whom we questioned

exonerated them from the charge of cannibalism. The Gonds whom we met with, far

from showing any symptoms of cannibalism, even abstain from beef. The lower classes

have no objections to other kinds of animal food, although the chiefs and better sort of

folk have adopted the prejudices of the Hindu in this respect.iv

Richard Jenkins, in his report on the Nagpur territories formed the impression that while the

wildest of the Gonds, the Murias of Bastar, engaged in human sacrifice, the majority of Gonds

'class themselves under the second cast [sic] of Hindoos'. This, he wrote, 'is a stretch of

complaisance in the Marhatta [sic] officers, owing, probably, to the country having been so long

under the Rajahs of the Gond tribe. They, however, term themselves Coetoor (a corruption of

Khutriya).'v This account, attributing Gonds with the status of Kshatriyas, almost certainly arose

from Jenkins' encounter with the Gond Rajah of Deogurh in Nagpur, a Hinduised 'Raj Gond',

who was then still nominally sovereign over a large part of the Rajah of Nagpur's territory and

still received a share of the state's revenues.vi Jenkins’ confusion well illustrates the uncertainty

of many writers in this period, but his distinction between more 'civilised' tribals and those

'others' of whom little is known but who were suspected of the most heinous savagery is also to

be found in the account written by Vans Agnew at this time, concerning the Subah or Province of

Chhattisgrah:

The only tribes I heard of that are peculiar to this part of India are the Kaonds, or

inhabitants of Koandwana [Gondwana], Kakair [Kanker], and Bustar, and Binderwa

and Pardeea casts found in the hills North-East of Ruttunpore....The Koands are

Hindoos and not particularly distinguished from the wild inhabitants of other jungles,

except by the high character they are reputed to possess for veracity and fidelity...The

Binderwas reside in Hilly and Woody Country near Ruttunpore, particularly in the

Koorba and Sirgooja Hills, and much resemble the wild savages who have been

described as met with in other parts of India. They appear to be so seldom seen by the

other inhabitants of the Country [so] that there is much reason to doubt the truth of all

that is reported respecting them. They are, however, said to have scarcely any religion;

but if they regard any idol, Daby [Debi] has the preference. They go entirely naked; are

armed with Bows and Arrows; never build any huts or seek other shelter than that

afforded by the Jungles; but sometimes cultivate small quantities of the coarse grains;

are said to destroy their relatives when too old to move about and to eat their flesh,

when a great entertainment takes place to which all the family is invited. Their enemies,

and the travellers they may slay, they are also said to eat. It is doubtful that they have

the ceremony of marriage.vii

The Concept of Sacrifice in India: myths and realities

There have been numerous studies of sacrifice by Indologists, including a book by Jan

Heesterman (1993), and discussions of its role in contemporary Hindu society (Fuller, 1988 &

1992). A collection of essays entitled Criminal Gods and Demon Devotees, edited by Ralph

Hiltebeitel (1989) is one of the most useful. Amongst the collection an article, by Madeleine

Biardeau, entitled 'Brahmans and Meat-Eating gods', describes the ritual of buffalo sacrifices to

village gods in southern India, including an extraordinary example in Thanjavur district, at the

Valattur temple, of a ritual referred to as 'human sacrifice'. The dominant caste here are Kallars,

who are sudras, but see themselves as Kshatriyas (since there are Kallar kings). They are non-

vegetarian, but the gods, in the temple are vegetarian, and in the ritual of 'human sacrifice'

offerings of milk are dragged to the temple by men with hooks in their backs, the hooks being

removed immediately outside the temple entrance in deference to the god's vegetarian diet. There

is also an 'impalement stake' outside the village, whose purpose again is mythological rather than

practical, it being the stake upon which was impaled the demon king who stole a Brahmin

woman according to folk legend. Goat sacrifices are offered occasionally to the demon guardians

of the gods, but never the gods themselves.

In another essay in the same volume Biardeau points out the similarities between the buffalo

sacrifices of dussehra and the Vedic royal sacrifice or horse sacrifice, an expiatory rite for the

King's sins - pointing to some instances where the two ceremonies have been fused - an instance

of which is described in an essay by Waghorne on the kingly rituals of Pudokottai. Biardeau

suggests that the rapport seen in these examples between Brahmans and meat-eating gods,

effected by means of the opposition between 'criminal gods' and their 'demon devotees', is

worked out through rituals and symbols ultimately derived from Vedic ritual: most notably the

Vedic horse sacrifice and the Vedic sacrificial post, or yupa.

Anncharlott Erschmann goes on to describe parallels between the Navakalevara ritual - the ritual

of renewal - and the rituals of worship at Jagannath - and various tribal antecedents. In particular

she sees parallels between log worship and buffalo sacrifices among the Konds of Orissa and the

carved figures and form of worship of Ballabhdra, Subhadra and Jagannath at Puri. The

continuity in the element of Sacrifice she considers especially important, as also the ritual of

renewal of the log gods in the villages - since, as she claims, ‘rituals of renewal are not a

common feature in tribal and folk religion’. In Khond villages worship is usually by non-

Brahmins but there are examples of Brahmins being involved, and of the log gods being

worshipped with milk instead of blood. Numerous other 'symbolic sacrifices' elsewhere are

described in the book, but the only blood ever spilled is that of buffaloes and goats. The spilling

of human blood amongst the Konds, Erschmann says, is unknown, at least in the present day.

Finally, there is the familiar practice of hook-swinging (known as the charak puja in Bengal),

described along with other forms of self-torture, such as fire-walking, in a number of first-hand

accounts from the colonial period. According to these accounts, volunteers, usually paid and

seasoned practitioners drawn from amongst marginal groups in village society, were swung from

poles by means of hooks piercing the flesh of their backs and sometimes legs. Wealthier landlord

families were the patrons of such festivals. Eye-witnesses described how a cloth wrap was often

employed to bear some of the weight and to protect the hook-swinger from falling in case the

hooks should rip through the flesh - although this rarely in practice seems to have happened.

There were many motivations for this rite, although most commonly the purpose seems to have

to have been the propitiation of Shiva (in Bengal and Maharashtra) and of female goddesses,

commonly Durga/Kali, or Dayamava, the goddess of smallpox, in the south. The desire for

children by women was a further motive cited. Propitiation in this ritual seems to have been

associated with the endurance of pain: mortal injury was exceptional, and although links with

human sacrifice have been suggested, Geoffrey Oddie has not found any nineteenth century

evidence of this, nor of death in a hook-swinging ceremony.viii

There are few nineteenth accounts of hook-swinging from the Central Provinces of British apart

from an alleged ‘Santhal’ ceremony in Chhattisgarh and instances described in the gazetters of

Betul and Seoni districtsix, but it is likely that rituals of buffaloe sacrifice similar to those of

South India and Orissa were associated with the celebration of the Goddess Danteshwari at

Dussehra in Bastar. Thus the accounts we have of the dussehra ceremony, the earliest of which

date from 1911, describe largely 'symbolic sacrifices' and the offering of milk and ghee to the

god. Goat sacrifices take place, and buffalo sacrifices too, but the latter are never offered near the

shrine itself, but in the forests, and at night. Whether or not 'human sacrifice' in any shape or

form may also have taken place, and how and why such claims came to be believed in a literal

sense, is the subject of this paper.

‘The invention of perdition’: human sacrifice and British relations with the Indian

kingdom of Bastar in the 19th century

Bastar was a tribal state, the largest and one of the most isolated in central India. Socially and

politically it was divided into forty-eight ‘parganas’, each with their own chief (Pargana gaita,

referred as Majhis in British records), but the rulers of the state as a whole were a Kshatriya

royal family which had migrated to the region from Warangal in Andhra Pradesh in the sixteenth

century and who had established their capital at Jagdalpur. They brought with them a family

deity, which they attempted to incorporate into the local religious pantheon, and an armed body

of retainers, who acted as their bodyguard and tax collectors. Formally, the Raja of Bastar was a

tributary of the Raja of Nagpur, although the annual tribute (of Rs. 5,000) was not very regularly

paid. Communications with the British first occurred when the East India Company was given

administrative control of the neighbouring Chhattisgarh region after 1818. When the Nagpur

kingdom escheated to the East India Company in 1854, Bastar was amongst those who become

their formal tributaries at the same time, a formal Sanad being granted to the Raja in 1862.

The key tribes of Bastar were/are firstly, the Bison Horn Marias, who were known for their

allegedly homicidal proclivities.x Then there are the so-called Hill Maria, who are called the

'Meta Koitur' by the Koitur and described as existing ‘in the last stage of Barbarism, perfectly

naked and beyond anyone’s control’.xi Finally there are the Murias, who call themselves 'Koitur'

(the people): known for their institution of the gotul (a dormitory where adolescents sleep

together prior to marriage) and their ostensible practice of human sacrifice. Those living adjacent

to Jagdalpur call themselves the Raja Muria. These formal names though are adapted, possibly

from the Khond word 'Mervi', much as the Khonds called themselves 'Kui', the British name

'Khond' probably deriving from the Telugu word 'Konds', meaning ‘small hills’.

Further tribal groups found in Bastar include the Bhattra, Halbas, Dhurwas and Dhorlas. The

Halbas formed the Raja's native militia. Their non-Dravidian language has become the lingua-

franca of Bastar, whilst the Dhurwa are said to be royal retainers who accompanied the Kakatiya

(Karkateeya) kings from neighbouring Warangal. While Hill Maria clans are only found one to

each village, the Bison-Horn and Muria are found in plural clan villages, though usually with one

clan dominant.

Apart from ancestral deities, the original being Barha Pen, according to Popoff (1980), all of the

Maria and Muria Bastar tribes worship an earth goddess, Tallur Mutte, also known as 'Tallin

Ochur' among the Bison-Horn and 'Talo dai' among the Hill Maria, also ‘bhum’ or ‘mati’. The

Earth includes ‘the spirits of the forest and rivers’ who must be seperately appeased, according to

Sundarxii. It is a form of this god that is supposedly to be found in the shrine at Dantewada

(sometimes also referred to as ‘Danteshwara’ or ‘Danteswara’ in historical records). Although

there is a supreme creating male deity, Ispuriyal, regarded as lying above her, Tallur Mutte is the

most important god in practice, since she is regarded as responsible for the manifestation and

continuance of the life cycle. In addition to Tallur Mutte there are also village mother goddesses

(Mata or Devi), who have names and distinct personalities, who are represented by a stone or

tree or by a flag when moving about. There are also lineage or clan deities: amongst Marias and

Murias witches and evil spirits are exorcised by groups of young men in ceremonial dress

carrying anga deo, the clan god, from village to village. Anga deo is represented by three parallel

logs tied to three cross logs, carried aloft by four men. Its arrival is greeted with festivities in

every village at which considerable quantities are drunk of silpi (palm toddy) and mahua (a spirit

or beer made from mahua flowers). Doubtless because of its social aspects this ceremony is

carried on with great enthusiasm even to the present day.xiii

The State deity, Danteshwari, is said to be not a tribal invention, but the family deity which

accompanied the Kakatiya kings of Warangal when they settled in Bastar. Some of the stones

even of the Danteshwari temple are said to have originated from Warangal. Danteshwari is seen

by the Hindus of Bastar as an incarnation of Durga (Kali) and as a Shakti Pitha, one of the 52

parts of the dead body of the goddess Sati which according to legend fell to earth after she was

cut up and the pieces scattered by Lord Vishnu. It is likely that the Gonds themselves regarded

her as a sort of supra village goddess, infinitely more powerful, but ultimately comparable to the

anga (log-gods) and other local deities which they habitually worshiped.

The Jagannath- style celebrations involving Danteshwari, held at Dantewara each year during

Dusshera, were initiated, it is believed, sometime around the middle of the fiftteenth century, by

King Purshuttamdeva. A highly Hinduised ceremony (held in the month of Arshara), which

begins with worship at a Mahar shrine, of Kachin, it nonetheless includes a ritual where the King

is captured by the Muria, Maria and Bhattra tribals and carried off into the forest, where

offerings are made to him, the king only being restored to the Palace the next day by the same

tribals (according to Popoff, three days or more later according to J.C.K. Menonxiv), thus

symbolising his election. The celebrations are followed subsequently by a feast and Durbar

attended by all the clan chiefs, at which grievances are addressed.

Atypically in Hindu ceremonies elsewhere in central India, sacrifices (mostly of goats) take place

throughout the dussehra festival, though mostly away from the shrine itself. Alfred Gell, in a

recent paper,xv has argued that this ceremony implies the relative powerlessness of the Raja, and

the dependence of his authority on this form of annual re-investiture by the Gonds. The dussehra

celebration itself he has described as a mock revolt, which underlines the autonomy of the

various tribal groups which go to make up the population of the State. In other words that the

Hindu raja is a king by sufferance rather than by right. Whilst this interpretation has been

criticised as two-dimensional and excessively abstract by Sundarxvi, the comments of the Diwan

about the Hills Marias of Abujmarh (appendix 1 and below), certainly lend weight to the idea

that there was a considerable gulf between the rulers and the ruled, at least by the mid nineteenth

century. At the same time, it ought be emphasised that rituals of re-investiture and legitimation

of this sort are not uncommon in mixed tribal/kingdoms of this sort and are indeed commonplace

in a variety of religious rituals.xvii Nandini Sundar is therefore certainly correct in critiquing the

alleged ‘exceptionalism’ of the Bastar state and society as being at least in part a product of

colonial discourse and in arguing that tribal revolts of the colonial period were a reaction to

economic and social change and the material distress brought about by the imposition of colonial

policies, particularly those relating to the extraction of forest produce.

Human Sacrifice as Colonial Justification – Bastar Deconstructed

From about 1837 onwards there were increasing rumours of ritual human sacrifice in Bastar.

Undoubtedly this was connected with the Madras Government’s first expedition into the Khond

Zamindari of Ghumsur in 1836 to enforce the payment of land tax, upon which the first

allegations of human sacrifice amongst the Khonds came to light. In 1842 the Diwan, Lal

Dalganjan Singh, was summoned to Nagpur to be questioned, following conveyance of

allegations to the British resident there, Major Wilkinson. The Raja was represented then by his

uncle, the Diwan (or Primeminister) Lal Dalganjan Singh, and a detachment of police was

subsequently sent to the Dantewara temple to stand guard and prevent further such incidents.xviii.

A special agency, the Meriah Agency (so called after the name of alleged sacrificial victimsxix)

was soon after established by Government of India Act XXI of 1845. Sir John Campbell was

appointed charge of this Agency with instructions to continue investigations and to endeavour to

suppress the rite of human sacrifice, here and elsewhere in the Khond territories of central and

eastern India. Meanwhile Khond resistance from the hills of Ghomsur continued, culminating in

a general uprising in 1846-47.

Allegedly the uprising of 1846-7 was partly in response to the prevention of sacrifices and the

famines that followed, although loss of land and the payment of land tax were probably at least

as important. Once again an expeditionary force was sent to re-impose the East India Company’s

control, at a considerable cost in human lives. Rebellion and the rite of human sacrifice were thus

closely associated in the minds of British officials, and renewed allegations from Bastar led to an

investigation by John MacVicar in the 1850s, followed by another by McNeill, and a further

expedition sent to Bastar from Sironcha under the command of Colonel Glasfurd in 1862. Later

still, allegations surfaced again in the 1880s in the wake of the Khond uprising in Kalahandi in

1882. By this time Lal Kalendra Singh, Dalganjan Singh’s son, had become Diwan to the Raja

Bhairamdeo, following an uprising in the Bastar state itself in 1876. Lal Kalendra Singh was

considered untrustworthy, and was replaced by a British Assistant Commissioner in 1886 at the

conclusion of this last phase of investigations into the rite of human sacrifice, and the Bastar

states tribute to the British Raj raised to Rs. 15,000 per annum. But what, it must be asked, was

at stake in all this ? By looking in detail at the investigations of the 1850’s and the 1880’s, and

the legal and court proceedings that followed, a number of answers can be suggested.

1. The British 'Mission Civilisatrice'

To begin with, there is a clear functional explanation for the above mentioned events, an

explantion both personal and imperial. Thus, allegations of human sacrifice easily found an

audience in those whose career was built upon the very existence of the phenomenon, such as

John MacVicar, the Officiating Agent to the Hill Tracts of Orissa. MacVicar was appointed as an

assistant to Sir John Campbell and took command of the Agency whilst Campbell himself was

on medical leave, and was the first to extend the operations of that Agency from Kharonde and

Jeypore into Bastar. There are parallels to be seen here with the phenomenon of Thuggee: the

alleged religious conspiracy in central India, uncovered by a newly appointed and ambitious

officer, by which travellers were supposedly strangled in propitiation of the goddess Kali. An

element of ‘sacrifice’ is to seen here also, and Thugee was likewise established upon the

uncorroborated evidence of a handful of individuals claimed as witnesses, whilst its suppression

brought fame and career success to William Sleeman, the officer in charge of the specially

created ‘Thuggee and Dacoity’ Agency. In a similar fashion, the Meriah agency was set up to put

an end to Human Sacrifice in Orissa, and was given the additional responsibility of suppressing

female infanticide, and for good measure also, Sati.xx Hook-swinging, due to its rather less fatal

effects was not included and was not indeed prohibited in Bombay until 1856, British Bengal in

1865, and in Madras until 1894.xxi

In both the Thugee and Meriah agencies, the rhetoric of the responsible officers is tinged with a

rhetorical fervour that must have been designed to win approval from an audience beyond that of

the officer’s immediate superiors. Since the Thugee and Meriah commissioners reported to either

the Governor-General (in the case of Sleeman), or to a senior Commissioner (in the case of

Campbell), the audience they sought to impress most probably lay at home, in Britain. In both

cases, Sleeman and Campbell claimed by their own estimate to have saved the lives of hundreds

and went on to write best-selling memoirs of their achievements, Campbell himself emphasising

the parallels between the two ‘civilising missions’.xxii Above all, the investigation of the agencies

justified the drafting in of considerable additional police and military forces in order to more

firmly establish, or extend, British rule. Inevitably these expeditions were usually further

associated with a more effective collection of land tax and/or a rise in the payments of tribute.

In one aspect Thugee and human sacrifice significantly differed, in that Thugee was recognised

as existing within the East India Company’s own territories, albeit those wrested only recently

from their former Maratha rulers. To explain its persistence therefore it was necessary to conjure

up the notion of a widespread conspiracy, which served to obstruct the British authorities from

knowing what was going on and which accounted for the lack of, or difficulty in obtaining

evidence. By contrast, although it was claimed that human sacrifices were sometimes carried on

in secret, allegations of widespread conspiracy were uncommon, since the misrule of individual

native authorities could always be held responsible for the absence of evidence and the failure to

apprehend those responsiblexxiii Hence the following description from John MacVicar in 1855:

I gather from various quarters that four or five years ago...there was some kind of bond

given by the Bastar ruler to the Resident with respect to their rite of human sacrifice and

the Nagpore raja sent down a guard to Dantewaddy to prevent its further performance.

Of the guard which has ever since remained, two men incurred the displeasure of the

deity and miserably perished; one was struck dead whilst on sentry at the temple, the

other was destroyed by fever; such is the fable... The consequence I believe has been

that not a year has passed without the immolation of human beings, the victims being

either kidnapped from the villages or selected from amongst the prisoners in

confinement in Jugdulpoor. A man now in my camp was set upon by a gang of rascals

whilst ploughing his field. He happened to be more powerful than his assailants and

struggled successfully until his shouts attracted the villagers and brought relief. He said

he thought his life was gone, for he knew they meant to sacrifice him, it being the

season. He added that it was determined at first to lodge a complaint with the Lal Sahib,

but the idea was subsequently abandoned as only likely to bring further trouble upon

him, the local authorities having undoubtedly sanctioned the outrage. I am informed that

is the invariable custom, whether with villagers or prisoners, to seize and sacrifice those

only who have no kindred and are not generally known in the countryside, whereby

disagreeable murmurings and complaints are suppressed. I am pursuing my enquiries

amongst the people at this place; when I have finished I propose following the Lal Sahib

to the temple of his idol.xxiv

MacVicar went on to claim that in his belief the people themselves have no affection for the rite,

it's continuance being entirely a whim of the local aristocracy.xxv This too mirrored the claims of

Sleeman, who maintained that many of the Thugs enjoyed the protection of local zamindars and

aristocrats – a sentiment in tune with the anti-aristocratic prejudices of utilitarian reformers

influential within the Company’s administration at this time.xxvi The cure, as MacVicar saw it,

was the removal of Lal Dalganjan Singh, whom he described as the evil genius behind the throne

of Bastar.xxvii MacVicar also expresses, however, an ulterior motive, that by such actions the

people should be taught to look up to the Supreme Authority of the Government of India,

represented in the person of the newly arrived Deputy Commissioner in Raipur.

The time is most favourable for the measures I propose. This district is just now for the

first time coming under the British rule. [In fact it was still a nominally independent

though tributary state and was to remain so - CB] As yet the people know this only

from report and have not yet heard of the arrival at Raepore of the Deputy

Commissioner. In order that all should look to this officer (which is very important in

their present transitional state) the removal of the Lal Sahib would be best effected

through him, by order of the Commissioner in Nagpore. The reason of the removal

would [then] be made known by proclamation, not only throughout Bastar, but in all the

adjoining districts.xxviii

This then, it could be argued, was a principal function of the Meriah agency: to provide evidence

that justified the displacement of indigenous rulers and their advisers, and which enabled either

direct British control or else a government more sympathetic to British paramountcy, to be put in

its place.

Interestingly, the situation in Bastar was to change dramatically after 1859, when the escheat of

the Nagpur state and the rebellion of 1857 led to a new relationship being established with the

Princely states. As already mentioned, a Sanad was granted (in 1862), and an Oath of fealty was

then taken in 1870xxix, whose text read as follows:

‘I am a chieftain under the administration of the Chief commissioner of the Central

Provinces. I have now been recognised by the British government as a Feudatory,

subject to the political control of the Chief Commissioner, or of such officer as he may

direct me to subordinate myself to....I will take such order with my subjects that they

shall have no cause to complain against injustices of mine... When the Chief

Commissioner or his Officer shall give me instructions or advice, I will obey such

instructions and accept such advice. And I shall conform and cause my subjects to

conform, to such Forest Regulations as the C.C. may be pleased to prescribe. If, at any

time, through the misconduct of myself or my successor, my State should fall into great

disorder, or great oppression should be practised, then I or my successor shall be liable

to suspension or forfeiture of my or his governing powers.’

After this date 'Perdition' was far less desirable, and for a while rumours of sacrifices, instead

of being investigated, began simply to be covered up.xxx Thus rumours of kidnapping and

sacrifice in 1868 were peremptorily dismissed by the District Commissioner of ???, who

described the incident as merely one of 'raiding by Gonds' in which there may have been

casualties.xxxi

A similar report, forwarded to the Government of India (GOI) by the Chief Commissioner of

the Central Provinces (CCCP) was received from the District Commissioner, Bhandara,

concerning Human Sacrifices, again in 1868, in which it is said:

No instance is reported to have occurred within living memory in any district of the

Central Provinces, except D.C. Chanda who says that a party of Gonds once came down

in a village which had enjoyed 'singular irritations' from plunderers invoking the

supposed power of the village god and seized three inhabitants and slew them before

'his shrine'. ... This however looks like a bit of defiance of the boasted power of the

God. D.S.P. Raipore says that sometimes a man cut his finger into a new tank and

there are other rumours of sacrificing a black cat. D.C. Bhundara says the most horrible

thing done in his district was the murder of a cow by the Gonds, which was done with

great mystery for fear of the Marathas. D.S.P. says Bhundara people occasionally go so

far as to dress up a goat like a woman and make it walk like a sacrifice on his [sic] hind

legs. D.C. Upper Godavery district thinks that the idea of murder having been human

sacrifice was a horse's/mare's neck. One man killed was [in fact] a debt collector to a

village trader and had been quartered on the murderer who was one of his employer's

debtors...

According to a custom in this area, it was said, creditors combined the advantage of dunning

their debtors and the use of their servants free of cost, which must have aroused considerable

resentment. The District Commissioner observed that this latter murder was claimed to be a

sacrifice for the purpose of mending a broken tank, but that if so, it had not worked, for the

tank was still broken and the murderer clearly had little faith as he was currently growing rice

in it. A more likely explanation he thought was that the murderer mysteriously began the day

with 8 annas and ended it with 7, having spent 13, whilst the victim, equally mysteriously,

began the day with 12 annas in his pocket, and ended the day with nothing. This was, perhaps,

a more immediate and overriding benefit, he argued, than the hoped for repair of the tank.xxxii

The autonomy of the Bastar State was in subsequent years reduced, however, and when

rumours of sacrifice surfaced again in the 1880s and later, they were used not as a weapon of

territorial conquest, but simply as an excuse for further administrative interference. The

mythology was last invoked in 1910, when it was alleged (quite arbitrarily) that a failure to

carry on the customary rite might have been a cause of unrest amongst the Gonds. There were

in fact far more practical reasons, as described by Sundar (1997), but the practice of sacrifice

was never again mentioned thereafter, since following the uprising of that year, direct British

administration of the State was established. In the Khond territories in Orissa, however, a

British administration was never effectively established, so myths of sacrifice there seem to

have persisted far longer.

For adivasis as a whole the myths of human sacrifice also persisted as part of their

identification by Christians and Hindus, especially reformist Hindus. For Christians a clear

strand of theological interpretation evokes the issue of sacrifice in order to distinguish

Christianity from Judaism and earlier Greek and Roman faiths. In the nineteenth century this

was a lively subject of debate: any encounter by a devout Christian (as most Company servants

were in this period) with a barbarian and unknown community would therefore be

accompanied by a presumption that human sacrifice was present. Common cause could then

readily be found between Christians and radical Hindu reformers who used such issues for

quite different purposes in disputes with traditionalists.xxxiii Finally, traditional Brahminical

learning as well as popular had a special place for adivasis within Hindu cosmology which

often associated them with magic and bizarre ritual, not to mention sexual excess. Real

sacrifices may of course have occurred - particularly in the consecration of tanks (these

sacrifices being known as 'Buldan').xxxiv. However, even these could be misinterpreted by

impressionable British officials, one of whom mistook a stump in the middle of a tank for a

'sacrificial post'.xxxv The usual practice was most often simply to bury gold or cowries at the

bottom of poles set in the middle of tanks - not the bodies of recently slaughtered humans. In

reality, sacrifices of animals are carried on throughout the dussehra festival in Bastar, but there

is no evidence of regular human sacrifice in the nineteenth century, despite persistent rumours

to this effect.xxxvi

2. The ‘Evangelical’ Perspective

In addition to the East India Company’s strategic aims (of which he was keenly aware) and his

own personal ambitions, MacVicar, as Campbell's assistant in Bastar in the 1850's, seems to

have had a special missionary zeal, and to have been willing more than most to believe the

worst of the Bastaris. He was thus convinced that he had proof of the existence of human

sacrifice even before he arrived in the state, having received a verbal account of a kidnapping

allegedly for this purpose.xxxvii As if this were not enough, one of his earliest letters assured the

Secretary to the Government of India that 'Amongst other atrocities of this land is the crushing

of human beings under the wheels of the idol's car, at the Dussehra festival'. Clearly he had

been influenced by pamphlets written by J.C. Peggs and others describing the alleged

‘atrocities’ at the shrine of Jagannath at Puri, published and distributed in Britain in the 1830's

by the 'Coventry Society for the Suppression of Infanticide, Human Sacrifice and other such

Barbarian Atrocities', and other similar missionary organisations.xxxviii

MacVicar insisted that 'It would not perhaps be impossible to prove that the victims were not

victims, although from what I have heard I am very confident that these pretended martyrdoms

are the result of violence and coercion'. All this he concluded from information received

before he had even crossed the border into the State. A man with a mission, no doubt, and one

wonders as to the veracity of his sources. According to John Campbell, on more than one

occasion his subordinates were duped by their native informants.xxxix MacVicar also enquired

during this tour into the custom of Sati (the self-immolation of widows). He was assured by his

informants at Biersingapore in Jeypore that they were too 'low caste' for such customs,

although the same informants claimed, probably ingenuously, that 'it obtains at Naurangpoor

[Narainpur - in northern Baster] where there are high caste people', usually during the month of

Ashvin, supposedly, between September 15th and October 15th.xl

It is clear that this was a country riven with innuendo and powerful superstitions, though many

of them had equally obviously only recently arrived from Scotland. When finally MacVicar

eventually reached Dantewara, he was of course unconvinced when the priests at the

Danteswari temple denied the practice of human sacrifice, even though they admitted their

forefathers may have practised it: 'they were of course the very last men from whom there was

any likelihood of arriving at the truth’, he wrote in his notes.xli

It must be said, that the views of the more experienced agent, John Campbell, were often

equally unsubstantiated and inconsistentxlii MacVicar , however, was yet more reckless and

ambitious. Unfortunately, his investigations were cut short by ill health, soon after a visit to

Abujmarhxliii. His last and most hysterical report, reads as if he were aware that not only his

health but also his career were slipping away from him:

The country is governed by the Lal Dhalganjan Sing, brother of the late Rajah and uncle

of the present Raja. I believe there is nothing good about this man but his personal

appearance. His turbulent character has often brought him into trouble and he has been

confined as a State Prisoner at Nagpur and Raipur. The young Rajah, aged about 18, is

not allowed a voice at anything that pertains to the govt. of this country, and hence the

people consider him a nonentity and regard the Lal Sahib as the sole source of good and

evil for themselves. Their dread of incurring his displeasure is very great, and

necessarily so, for they have never known any other power nor even dreamt of such a

thing as an appeal from any of his orders. or decrees. ...The extreme difficulty of

attaining our end will be readily understood when it is stated that this Lal Sahib is the

very head and front of the offending as regards human sacrifice. He is superstitious to

the last degree, and confides in the power as he fears the wrath of his idol god

Danteshwara, and thinks no harm can befall him if that divinity shields and protects

him. To secure that protection no price (is) too high, no sacrifice too precocious, hence

human blood has never ceased to flow. The Laull Sahib has felt himself strong enough

to set at naught the orders he has from time to time received from his superiors at

Nagpore.xliv

Referring again to the case of a kidnap victim, supposedly intended as a sacrifice and seized

with the knowledge of the Diwan, Dalganjan Singh, MacVicar reported the Diwan's denial of

the allegations made against him in the following terms:

I have not the remotest doubt that he was so destined [to be sacrificed]. The whole

country believed the same thing. Every witness that dare speak asserted plainly that it

was for sacrifice he was carried away... [I]n no part of the district was it attempted to be

denied that the system of kidnapping was rife throughout Bustar in order to provide men

for Pooja. There is no doubt that last year two victims were crushed to death under the

wheels of their idol car, and how much human blood washed to propitiate Dunteshwaree

it will be impossible ever to discover. On one occasion, Capt. Hill reports, no less that

27 men were sacrificed at the same time. This was called 'the great sacrifice'.

Macvicar's diary reveals that in fact the Diwan was not denying anything, but merely

questioning the authority of MacVicar to adjudicate in such matters. Likely as not this merely

aggravated his case.xlv It can easily be inferred from MacVicar’s observations, however, that

the undoubted prevalence of witchcraft, associated in particular with the ceremonies of

marriage, as well as rumours of sacrifice, even of black cats, were probably a more potent

reality than the practice of sacrifice itself, and that MacVicar had become a victim of this

superstition.xlvi This is apparent from the sharp difference between his views, and those of the

last Agent, McNeil, who had been formerly deputed to investigate in Jeypore at the same time

as MacVicar (1854).

McNeil was appointed Agent, immediately prior to the abolition of the Meriah Agency, in

1859. Both he and Colonel Glasfurd, the District Commissioner of Sironcha, who conducted

an investigation in 1862 to decide on the need for the establishment of a separate police force

for Bastar and Kharonde, concluded just a few years later that human sacrifice was not a

problem. So careless was he of his personal position that MacNeil even said that the practice of

human sacrifice was absent by then amongst the Khonds (contrary to everything he was

reported to have told MacVicar in 1854), although he did say that the lesser crime of ‘temple

infanticide’, as he described it, was ‘universal’.xlvii This view may have been forced upon him

by the lack of evidence, although McNeil’s churlishness in absolving the Bastaris entirely of

the taint of barbarism may have been partly due to the fact that his powers of joint magistrate

in the locality (conferred in 1854) depended on one or other of these offences being found in

some form or other.xlviii

3. Indigenous Political, Symbolic and Ideological uses of sacrifice

Quite apart from evangelical and imperial zealotry as a factor in the mythology of human

sacrifice, an important point is that for many Indians at the time a belief in sacrifice, if not the

actuality of it, was useful, perhaps even necessary, not least of all for the Rajas of Bastar.

To begin with, sacrifice could play an important role in struggles for succession and in local

political disputes. For example, in one case detailed in the records of the Nagpur secretariat,

which was transparent even to the British at the time,xlix the Raja of Karonde, Futty Narian

Dev, effected the deposition of the chieftainship of Toolamol and Cassimore, Shri

Lutchunsing, and his replacement by his brother Ramchundar Singh in 1853, by resorting to

allegations of sacrifice.l This dispute arose from the payment of tribute for the zamindari,

which Lutchunsing says was given to his family as dowry, whilst the rajah claimed it was a

jagir. Ramchundar Sing agreed to pay the tribute and was therefore placed in charge of the

chieftainship on the justification that the previous ruler (Lutchunsing) practised human

sacrifice. The charges though were unproven, and John Campbell was forced to admit that 'the

charges and counter charges of encouraging human sacrifices’ were ‘mere recrimination'.

Ramchundar Singh only took control of Toolamol after burning the capital and fort to the

ground. An uprising of the adivasis nonetheless still threatened, and Campbell was therefore

persuaded to effect the restoration of Lutchunsing after the detention of his brother in Nagpur.

It is apparent that allegations of sacrifice could also play a part in power struggles between the

Diwan and Pargana Majhis of Bastar State, or alternatively between the Diwan and the Raja. In

regard to the former witness, the oral testimony of Eyar Mohamed Khan of Jagdalpur

concerning the first fully documented kidnap victim is most revealing:

Offerings of human beings were made formerly. It was a servant to the Raja Mahipal Deo who

was grandfather to the present Raja, during his time once in every three years, the great Poojah

was celebrated to the devota, Danteshwara, when five or 600 goats, 400 or 500 buffaloes are

offered, then I heard that during the night the three or four men are offered also, but this I have

not seen with my eyes. About this time for the Poojah in all the frontier villages of other

districts bordering on this district, men would be robbed and brought to this place for the

Poojah. But as the victims were many, and the rumour in consequence generally spread

abroad, it was known at Nagpur, and the Raja was sent for to that place, and orders were

issued to prevent the future sacrifice of human beings, and a Mochilka taken from him. In this

Mochilka, I recollect the Dalganjan Singh also affixed his signature . It was then that guards

were stationed as Jagannath and at Dantewada, and a manager to report affairs to Nagpur.

Although all this had been done, the seizing of human beings was carried on every year, and

when strangers could not be procured, there would be a degree of agitation from fear of

kidnappers in the villages of the district . Last year Dalganjan Singh returned from Tooamool

to this place, and after a stay of about two months the following case occurred: a Soonda's son-

in-law of Dhumpoonjea, formerly a resident of Jeypore and of about 16 or 18 years old was

one night robbed from his village by some people of the village of Rokkapoul, Thoongapoul,

and Joongahanee in the month of Jaisht (May and June). He was taken away and secreted in

the jungle near a river when this young man fortunately extricated himself and ran away to his

village where he gave all the information of his capture, and as he knew some of the names of

the kidnappers mentioned them to Dachin Majee, the chief of his village. Dachin Majeee

collected some of his people and went at night to the three villages of the kidnappers and

seized five men whom he confined. Dalganjan Singh Lal Sahib hearing this sent for Dachin

Majee etc. but they would not come and sent a message saying that the Lal Sahib had only to

do with him in matters connected with revenue, which he would readily obey, but for his

seizing and killing people of his village to attend on that account they would not obey. The Lal

Sahib, finding that they would not, deputed some of his people to the villages neighbouring to

the Majee's, who by good means through the villagers induced Dachina Majee, Soomar Majee

etc to attend. On arrival of these before him they were immediately placed in strict

confinement and Dachina Mejee and Somae Majee were fetterred. The Panneen hearing all

this wrote to Raipure and it is said that instructions were received to send these prisoners to

that place for investigation. Eight days before this event occurred, at cultivator at Kcokopoul

was seized by 10 or 12 men, but on his making a loud voice, the people of his village ran to

his assistance. The kidnappers immediately decamped. At this time there was a great stir in all

the country, the people of many villages entertained the greatest fear from been seized by

kidnappers and at night all the males of the villages would be armed and be watchful. In these

days a complaint was preferred by a Soondev of what village I do not know, to the Lal Sahib

that his two sons while ploughing fields were seized and taken away by somebody and what

had become of them he did not know. The Lal Sahib became enraged, and drove him away

saying that as he did not catch those who caught his sons he had no business to come before

him thereby disgracing him. The Soondev returned much downhearted at the conduct of the

Lal Sahib. Reports of people being kidnapped not been taken notice of by the Rajah, the

people of the country consider that it is he that require human beings for the Poojah, and found

it not beneficial bringing their losses of human beings before him. It is also said that the Lal

Sahib departs particular individuals for the express purpose of kidnapping human beings for

the Pujjah, but to test it, it is impossible. The Kokapaul and adjoining villages about seven or

eight in number do not paid any tax to the sircar and the Raj is only supplied with wood when

he requires it, as these are the only villages excused taxation, it would appear and it is

expressed as an indugence by the Rajah, for the express purpose of kidnapping. The chief

Davota of the Raj is 'Danteshwara' before whom for a length of time human beings are

sacrificed, to omit this sacrifice now would be a very great difficulty. The Raja cannot be

without sacrifice every year, and the villagers around in consequence and in a great degree of

fear from some of their people been kidnapped when an opportunity offers. li

In this case, Datchena Majee may have been imprisoned by the Diwan not for alleging his

complicity in the seizing of a ‘Soonda’s son-in-law’, as is stated, but for undertaking a reprisal

raid on a neighbouring village. Datchena Majee then further defied the Diwan's authority by

saying that he and others were responsible to the Diwan for the paying of revenue and for

nothing else, doubtless thereby making retaliation inevitable.

On the other hand, mysteriously, the Diwan, Lal Dalgangan Singh, and he alone, is said to

have officiated at ceremonies at Dantewada - suggesting perhaps that he might have practised a

form of human sacrifice in an attempt to subvert the authority of the young (16 year old) Raja,

Bhairamdeo, who has just acceded to the throne in 1853. All of the witnesses testifying,lii

including the victim himself, spoke of the prevalence of the myth and/or the revival of the

practice itself. The testimony of the kidnap victim, Biswanath of Korkopoul of Bastar, is as

follows:

In the month of Jaist/May and June/ name of day or date of month I do not know, one

morning 2 hours after sunrise about 200 yards from my village of Korokopaul, I was

ploughing by myself my fields, which are situated in an easterly direction from my

village when two tall and able men, apparently of the Oriya caste came, from I do not

know, one of them caught me on the back of my waist and the other by my shoulder –

when I asked them why they seized me and they replied in the ‘Banthee’ language that

as you have eaten well and as don’t you have plenty of blood in your body, we shall

therefore give you to the Davota. Hearing these words, I became greatly afraid that my

life would be lost in this manner, I prayed to my God and cried aloud and fear

immediately subsided and having wrestled with those who had hold of me, I extricated

myself and laid hold of the staff with which I drove my bullocks and struck one of the

men when 10 or 12 able men who had escorted themselves in the jungle ran from it to

seize men, whereupon I threatened them with a loud voice, that if they came near me I

would kill them with the Tangee which I took from my waist and shook at them, they

therefore stood aloof, the people of my village hearing my voice ran towards me and the

people that endeavoured to seize me decamped..

Q: Why did they catch hold of you?

A: To offer me to the ‘Devota’

Q: To what Devota and by whose order were you seized?

A: The Davota who requires to eat human beings is the ‘Dantewara’ for whom they

seized me, and I must have been seized by order of the rulers of the country.

Q: Do Rulers of this District at times seize people for sacrifice?

A: I have heard so from sensible people of the District that the rulers are of this practice.

…

Q: In this District, after you were caught, were any other person caught?

A: Eight days having elapsed after I was caught was a man caught at the Gamal village.

Q: In what year in what month was the festival celebrated to ‘Danteswara’

A: Month Ashada / June and July

Q: At what period generally is the festival celebrated of offering of human beings?

A: In the month Palgun and Ashad, the festival taken place, but when human offerings

are made I do not know. In the Dussera festivals in Ghyatrom month, the festival is

celebrated in the fort.liii

A common feature throughout these testimonies is that the alleged sacrifices are always said to

be done at night and in secret. Why this should so is difficult to say, the implication is always

that it was because they are illegal (but then who is there about to object?). A more likely

explanation is that any form of tribal sacrifice would be considered shameful and un-Hindu by

Brahmins at the Rajahs courts (animal sacrifices take place in the forest and away from the

temple in present day dussehra ceremonies). Or perhaps it was because they did not really

happen at all in the first place.

The ‘Lal Sahib’ (Dalganjan Singh) was said to have been in dispute with the Raja 'Macpaul

Deo' in 1849, six years before MacVicar's (1855) report, and was alleged then to have carried

out a human sacrifice at Dantewara.liv. The actual names of the Rajas at that time were

Mahipaldeo (1800-1842) and Bhoopaldeo (1842-1853). Those complaining to MacVicar in

1855 said that again the Lal had taken to 'sacrificing men instead of animals'.lv With

considerable imagination and rather casting doubt on the veracity of his evidence, MacVicar

described his investigations as follows:

My suspicions were very naturally awakened by the strange way in which answers were

given, 'I know nothing', was the fancied reply, 'but ask so and so, he or she can tell you'.

Thus we were handed from one to another until our different scraps of information

resulted in this: that human beings were offered in sacrifice, that there was a class of

men who made these victims, and that they did so by order of the Raja. Lal Sahib is

always meant, though the Rajah's name is used.lvi

The wiliness of the Diwan described could of course have derived from his innocence.

Otherwise, these accounts reveals the Diwan’s motives to be complex, one his aims apparently

being to persuade MacVicar of the futility of further enquiry:

The Lall Sahib and the Rajah paid a visit to the agent to take leave. Much conversation

took place, the Lall Sahib persisted he knew nothing of human sacrifices. He was asked

again to explain the seizure of Bisanant and the Saundee but he replied the Kangers who

seized them can best tell them why. He admitted the truth of the Soandee’s statement.

He was told the Kangers had distinctly stated that it was by his order, although they

afterwards denied it, why this assertion and this denial? He could not say, but he

expressed astonishment that the agent was enquiring into a subject enquired into seven

or eight times by Wilkinson, Agnew, etc. and disposed of. He was told that justice

should be done….Much other unsatisfactory talk took place touching his relations with

Jeypore, and eventually he and the Rajah took leave.lvii

Then again, the Lal Sahib may have gained access to some of the witnesses to dissuade them

from giving evidence - quite sensibly.lviii It is certainly quite clear from his views on the Hill

Marias of the Abujmarh tract that he is happy to dissociate himself from his subjects whenever

he fears they may cause him trouble.

The Lal Sahib told me how they were in the last state of barbarism, perfectly naked and

beyond any man's control, that they would permit no-one into their fastnesses and

would pay no tribute. When I asked him if he had ever seen any of them he answered,

'no, who would go near such savages'.

On 9th Feb. 1854, MacVicar reported an encounter with the chiefs of Kattupandeee. This

account suggests the idea that the Diwan might indeed have carried out a sacrifice, or at least

claimed to do so, for political reasons:

The chief of this old fort paid their respects; they stated that there were seven paiks

stationed there. They do not know of the sacrifice of human beings, animals alone are

sacrificed and have been offered for many years. On being questioned regarding the

abduction of a man from Bagodery by Biswasserar Mazees and others for the purpose

of sacrifice, they said it was true and that the man was killed, but whether as a sacrifice

or not they did not know; it occurred nearly three years ago. The mazee paid a fine for

having taken away and killed the man. There were great rumours of the Lall sahib, on

his return from Nagpur having ordered men to be seized for sacrifice, but they did not

know if it was true or not.

No-one was taken away from Kootapandee after more conversation, [but] a

proclamation was given to the chiefs and its contents made known, prohibiting, by order

of government and under the severest penalties, the sacrifice of human beings under any

pretext whatsoever. All were then dismissed.lix

On this occasion, the Raja of Bastar drew up (or there was drawn up on his behalf) a

wonderfully diplomatic petition (or urzee), translated into Persian by one of the Palace

secretaries and almost certainly written by Lal Dalganjan Singh, which pleaded the Raja’s

innocence.

In 1859, the District Commissioner of Raipur reported that there were no sacrifices, but much

abuse of the police party and 'newswriter' at Dantewada by Dalganjan Singh.lx The attempts by

the British to impose their Police to regulate the custom thus appears to itself have become the

cause of dispute, given the implicit and very real threat to the Diwan's authority.

The second case of kidnapping reported to the District Commissioner of Raipur in 1855 was

most likely simply an attempt by the supposed victim to escape the custody of the Diwan.lxi

According to the Capt. Elliot, the D.C. Raipur, his examination of the witnesses revealed the

following:

The reason for his [the alleged intended victim] having been imprisoned by the Rajah,

he states, [was] … adultery with a woman named Dusmee, with whom he had fled and

lived in Kotepur of Jeypore [in Kotpad?]for one year, and that on his return Lall

Dulgunjun Sing had imprisoned him on the complaint of the husband of Dusmee. No

fine was taken from him, but the sepoys of the guard beat him and nobody interfered, so

that when he came out of the jail one day to cook his food (he) ran to where government

thannah is, where he claimed protection... no-one ever threatened or said that he would

be sacrificed to the goddess, nor did he ever make such a statement.lxii

The D.C. Raipur himself doubted the authenticity of the accusations made, although the police

party (all Hindus, with a Brahmin newswriter) to whom the victim fled, reported that his fear

was of being made a sacrifice. This was quite contrary to what the victim himself said to the

District Commissioner, stating that he only feared being 'beaten up' - a case perhaps of the

police being overzealous in an effort to perpetuate their jobs.lxiii

The final case, of which details are available in the records of the Nagpur secretariat, was

reported in 1886 and seems to have been the most politically motivated. It is also the most

celebrated and detailed, since the case went up as far as the High Court in Raipur, where

ultimately the prosecution’s case was to collapse ignominiously. The Case began with a

reported kidnapping of one Jadik, whose family reported his disappearance to the authorities.

Their evidence, and those of Jadik’s neighbours, were as follows:

Musamat Kandri (widow of Jadik): I am certain that my husband was not eaten by a

tiger, nor was he drowned. I think that he was carried off to the deo. Ever since I can

remember I have heard of the Melliahs of Kachrapati and Baugpali; they catch people

and take them to Dantawara.

Kula (son of Jadik): I do not know how my father was lost. He certainly was not eaten

by a tiger, nor was he drowned. He may have been seized by some one, but how can I

know this?

Sukra Parja: At the time I could not imagine how he (Jadik) was lost, but afterwards I

heard that the Kachrapati Melliahs go out to catch men, and I suspected that they must

have caught Jadik.

Karanji Parja: He (Jadik) was certainly not drowned or eaten by a tiger. If he had been,

we should have found some trace of him. I have heard of the Kachrapati Melliahs since

my childhood. They catch people for sacrifices at Dantewada.lxiv

A number of other examples of disappearances were reported and so the Political Agent, H.H.

Priest, proceeded to Danteswara to investigate. Soon after arriving he was able to obtain from

Munda Pundari, the chief priest, a graphic description of a sacrifice in 1876, which he said was

carried out upon the orders of the Rajah and Jia, a local zamindar. Jia himself admitted to the

political agent that Lal Dalganjan Singh, the previous Diwan, had sacrificed an Oriya man and

proceeded to corroborate every sacrifice since. Later on though he retracted this claim,

insisting that sacrifices had not occurred since 1842, and that in the present case he was merely

repeating the testimony of others because it was ‘expected’. The names of various kidnappers

were mentioned, and when seized, were told by the Jeypore police to admit to kidnapping for

the purpose of sacrifice, or otherwise (amongst other things) they would be hanged.

A case was ultimately brought in the High Court in Raipur against Sham Sundar Jia, the local

Zamindar, but it fell apart under the overwhelming evidence of coercionlxv There was indeed

evidence of torture of the prosecution’s witnesses, but this only came out once the case came

to trial:lxvi

When Ramchander [the key witness amongst the alleged kidnappers] was examined in

this court he said:

' I do not know about “Melias”. I do not know if they seize people. I have never seen

them do so nor have I ever heard of their doing so. I know “Khunjars” as thieves. I did

write before that “Melias” seize men for their sacrifice at Dantiwara but that is not true.

The fact is that from the time I came from my village I have acted as I was told to do by

Raghunath Manji. he said that unless we said that sacrifices were made of human

beings, and people seized, that we should be beaten, so I was in fear, and said what I

said from fear of being beaten. It is not true. I know nothing of “Melias” really, or of

victims being seized. Raghunath impressed on me there was a gallows ready at Kotpad

for those who denied knowing anything......I was never ordered by the Rajah to seize a

victim. I said so because I was pressed to name the Rajah by Raghonath, who declared

that unless one of us named the Rajah we would all be kept in confinement.'

The second witness, Raghonath Manji, when examined said, ' I wrote what I did from

fear. It is not true. I was very badly treated by the Jeypore police. I was taken from my

village to a Sahib in Nagarnar, and after that I was raced with a horse through rice fields

and taken to Kotpad. There in his tent the Jeypur Saib [Inspector] threatened and pushed

me and had me taken away to the thana, where I was kept tied up for four days, being

only loosened when necessary and for my meals. I was ironed and hand-cuffed, a stick

was passed through my legs, and my hair was tied to a post from behind. On the fourth

day I was shown a gallows and told I would be hung if I did not speak out. After this I

was taken to the Political Agent. I said nothing to him of what had been done to me. He

did not ask me and I was under fear then. I did speak to Ramchandar as he says: I said

that we should mention the Rajah's name, or we would not get off. I mentioned certain

men as seizers. I cannot say why. ... I never heard the name of Jadik. I never saw him. I

mentioned the name to the Political Agent out of my head. I never made any man over

to the accused at Dantiwara. What I said about this is quite false. I have said so in fear.

I said whatever came into my head. I was about a month in Kotpad.'

Another witness, Kana said:

‘I denied all knowledge of human sacrifices being made. Then the Inspector showed

me a pole in the ground with a cloth at the top of it., and told me that if I did not speak

out and say all I knew I would be hanged on that pole at 9 o'clock that night. I got

thoroughly alarmed. I then said whatever the Inspector wanted and told him what was

untrue. ...My detailed narrative is based on what the Jeypore Inspector had us all tutored

to say at Kotpad.. He had got hold of Matha and Marka Katiar [also] and they made a

detailed statement of what was done at Dantiwara on occasions of human sacrifices, and

what we were all to say in regard to specific cases. We all heard this and decided to say

the same.’

Even the chief priest, Munda Pundari, who claimed he had conducted the sacrifices said that

his victims were actually goats, and occasionally buffaloes, and that he had said they were

human beings since everyone insisted this was so. ‘If I had made any denial before, I had no

hope of it being listened to’, he told the court.

Clearly the confessions had been assembled by the Jeypore police, with the assistance of a

large measure of coercion, but with what motive? Was it merely a case of overzealousness? A

key factor in the trial, arguably was the place in which the offences originated. It was alleged

by the Jeypore police that victims were being kidnapped in the Kotpad taluqa, and were being

carried off to Bastar for sacrifice. This was probably not a coincidence, since Kotpad was a

disputed territory. The dispute between Bastar and Jeypore went back to the cession of this

territory during a succession dispute in Bastar state in 1774, when assistance was rendered to

the successful claimant by the Jeypore Raja. Although control of the territory was then ceded

to Jeypore by way of thanks, the Bastar rajas later claimed that this done under duress, that it

was merely a zamindari, and that the sovereignty remained theirs. In return they demanded an

annual tributes of Rs. 17,000, which needless to say the Jeypore Raja had refused to pay. One

might speculate that a motive for raiding by Bastar into Jeypore therefore existed, as well as a

motive for attempts by the Jeypore raja to make false accusations against the authorities in

Bastar in an effort to discredit them. Although by the 1880s the Jeypore state came under the

control of the Madras Presidency, it is reasonable to assume that the influence of the Jeypore

raja himself over the local police, was considerable. There were rivalries too between the

Central Provinces and Madras police and political authorities. It hardly seems a coincidence

therefore that this disputed border area seems to have figured so largely in allegations and

counter allegations over the years.

The Nagpur government's enquiry into the 1886 ‘Jia’ case ultimately turned into an enquiry

into the enquiry itself, with H.H. Priest, the political agent, attempting in an official report to

excuse the naivety of himself and his subordinates. Naivety there certainly was, and in

retrospect, the original accusations of the family of the disappeared 'Jadik' can be seen to have

been not only equivocal, but to have shown very clearly the impact of rumour.

4. The Power of Rumour

Rumour was perhaps the most important factor in an all of the cases above mentioned, and was

indeed a potent currency, capable of purchasing any number of advantages for those involved.

In 1886, there were rumours of a planned sacrifice, and these rumours had clearly been

circulating since at least 1883 when a similar 'disappearance' was reportedlxvii . Lal Kalendra

Singh was then ordered to Nagpur, after which, more rumours followed. Rumours arose again

in 1886 because the naming ceremony of the new Raja was due to take place. Whatever the

truth of the matter, the impression undoubtedly seems to have persisted in the minds of the

population that sacrifices normally accompanied state events. This may be either a cause or a

consequence also of their involvement in succession disputes. We cannot be sure, of course,

that there were succession disputes at this time - the Raja himself normally officiated in the

puja ceremonies at Dantewara, but what would be more natural than for the Diwan (a relative)

to officiate during the minority of the ruler, as occurred in 1908? However, this does not

explain the involvement of the diwan in the ceremonies in 1883, when the Raja himself was

ageing, but adult. Likewise again, note the following rumour, reported by the wife of Gopal

Das to McNeill in 1855 in a village near Dantewada:

About six years ago the Lal Sahib was on bad terms with the Macpaul Deo, the then

Rajah, and in consequence he ordered the sacrifice of the man at Duntewadah, when

there was a rebellion in the country. My husband told me this and that is the way I know

it.lxviii

Clearly there were internal political dynamics here, which cannot be ignored.

Paradoxically, human sacrifice may even have become more widespread as a result of British

interference and enquiries into its possible existence. Thus the Lal Dalganjan Singh was

rumoured to have carried out sacrifices after returning from his highly publicised visit to

Nagpur in 1842, where he had been called to answer for rumours that sacrifices had been

taking place.lxix It is possible that the issue in the 1850’s of a proclamation by John MacVicar

'to all the chiefs' calling upon them to give up the practice, served only to confirm in their

minds that the alleged sacrifices had indeed actually occurred. Nothing could arguably be

guaranteed to give rumours more credence than a government proclamation, especially since

evidence or witnesses of the alleged sacrifices could never be traced.

Conclusion

Rumours of sacrifice take many shapes and forms and can be accounted for in a variety of

ways. It is easy to dismiss them entirely as myth, as fabulous examples of judicial error in the

manner of inquisitional reports of the middle ages, or as examples of a conflict of cultures,

perceptions, and discourses (as commonly used to be said of the opium wars in China). It is

satisfying, moreover, to mourn the loss of a tribal culture, in which the idea of human sacrifice,

had a meaningful role to play in religious ritual (Padel, 1995), rare or non-existent, but perhaps

comparable in symbolic importance to that of crucifixion and martyrdom amongst the early

Christians. It would be a mistake however to deny altogether the political economy and

instrumentality in the events that unfolded in Bastar, at least, in the nineteenth century. Myths

of sacrifice were clearly perpetuated and elaborated by both British officials, missionaries, the

rulers of Bastar and neighbouring states, and their subjects themselves, for a variety of reasons

and motives, as continues to be the case to this day. Whilst judicial proceedings are but

interpretations, the same can be said of many sources employed by anthropologists and

historians, no matter how empirically ‘pure’ they may appear to be. The bulk of the evidence

quoted here was unpublished, and unavailable to a wider audience. The hints at conspiracy

therein could simply be a mirage created by the English judicial method and the interrogations

of officials. Some of these officials were Scots, some English, some Brahmins, some local

informants. Not all shared the same preconceptions and foreknowledge, nor did the events

described occur within the same time frame. Perhaps therefore, the encounter was not entirely

structured by colonial discourse. Individual volition had a role to play. The Lal Sahib and

others may have found the opportunity to use the idea of sacrifice to their own ends, as some at

the time indeed alleged: to do down their enemies whilst winning favour amongst their

followers, some of whom surely sincerely believed in the sacrificial rite. By echoing that most

heinous of sins in the minds of good Christians, by inventing the possibility of perdition,

Bastar’s very own ‘Black Hole’, the rulers of Bastar, Karonde and Jeypore, may well have

attempted, more than once, to turn the tables on their colonial adversaries and to manipulate

the British presence for their own purposes. To some extent they succeeded. Although, Lal

Kalendra Singh was for a while banished from the state, compensation was received from

Jeypore in exchange for the Kotpad taluka as part of the British settlement of this dispute.

Some respect at least for the autonomy of Bastar persisted, and the British did not ultimately

take complete control of the state for another fifty years. At the same time, not a single victim

was identified, or perpetuator of sacrifice ever sentenced or imprisoned, despite the very best

efforts of British officials, who themselves sought to maximally exploit what they could from

the rumours, allegations and events.

In an article by Robin Law (1985) on human sacrifice in Dahomey, Asante and Benin in West

Africa, it is persuasively argued that human sacrifice was integral to state ritual in the

eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and indeed seems to have increased during and

immediately after the abolition of slavery. Similar examples are to be found in Eastern and

Southern Africa, victims sometimes being killed by the bare hands of the king.lxx The occasion

for such sacrifices were the investitures and funerals of state dignitaries, the greatest number of

sacrifices usually occurring upon the death of a king and upon the investiture of his successor.

The victims were most often captive prisoners of war, of whom there were many. Occasionally

the king himself might be the victim following some great calamity or at the close of a

prescribed period of rule. It was widely believed that failure to carry out an appropriate

numbers of sacrifices would bring ill fortune upon the monarch or his successor, but with few

exceptions the rituals seem to have been more practical than religious in origin, borne out of a

desire to instil fear into foes and subjects and alike. Whether or not this has any relevance to

the case of Bastar it is hard to say, but Hermann Kulke in The Cult of Jagannath & the

Regional Tradition of Orrisa (1978) argues that the British at the time were well aware that

'however holds the shrine of Jagannath holds Orissa' (the words of Richard Wellesley). For this

reason the British made various diplomatic attempts were to take over the Puri temple complex

from Raghuji Bhonsle, the Raja of Nagpur, between 1765 and 1803. Missionaries too

perceived the importance of such shrines. J.C. Peggs, for one, was personally convinced that 'a

blow at idolatry here, will prove a blow at the root' of Hinduism. He failed to win any converts

at Puri, but later campaigned successfully against the Pilgrim tax and British support for

Jagannath and other temple complexes. Overall, Kulke concludes that the effect of these

campaigns merely heightened the fame of Jagannath and its 'first servitor', the Raja of Puri,

especially when the whole matter of temple dues went to court in the 1880's. The same logic

here could certainly be applicable to the case of Bastar.

One thing is certain: as in the myths of cannibalism described by Arens (1979), not a single

bone was every discovered in, or anywhere near, the shrine of Danteswari in Bastar. Purported

victims always seemed to miraculously escape, and they and their kidnappers then to

disappear, whilst tales of the sacrificial rite could never be found at more than third hand, at

best. In this, the human sacrifice scares of Bastar are comparable to the witchcraft crazes of

late medieval Europe. As analysed by historians,lxxi these were not simple cases of hysteria or

misunderstanding. There was a political economy to them: an attempt by the Church to reassert

its authority in the wake of the reformation, not only over the localities, but in reaction to the

growing influence of the bureaucratic state. They were also an attempt to restore patriarchal

hierarchy as Europe recovered from the plague, as rural economies began to prosper, and

gender balances shifted. There was a secondary side to them as well, an aspect in which

allegations of witchcraft, like any other allegation, could be manipulated within the locality by

individuals to their advantage. In the process they asserted their own agency and resisted

becoming either the victims or villains in the representations of others.

Since 2001, Bastar has been divided into two districts - Bastar and Dantewada - within the

newly formed State of Chhattisgarh. Exploitation of Bastar’s mineral and forest resources

continues apace: the Bailadila iron mines yielding thousands of tons of ore each year, and vast

profits being derived from legal and illegal logging and the sale of minor forest produce, which

is collected by under-paid tribal workerslxxii. Naxalite insurgency continues to threaten these

interests and is clearly supported by local tribals, most of the Tendu leaf collectors, for

example, joining a Naxalite-led Union in the early 1990s which repeatedly organised strikes in

pursuit of better wages. Ranged against them in the recent past has been the Congress party

and. latterly, the BJP, which has been actively recruiting supporters in the tribal areas of

central India. Although none of this gets much reported, there is still much that is very modern

about the problems and politics of contemporary Bastar. Yet still stories of human sacrifice

and cannibalism in tribal areas continue to circulate, to be reported in missionary tracts and to

be repeated again in the columns of Indian newspapers, and occasionally overseas. At the same

the Muria Gond institution of the ghotul, the dormitory club for adolescent teenagers, in which

they learn to become independent of their parents and enjoy their first experiences of sex,

continues to excite the imaginations of middle class Hindus, who for more than a century now

have wedded themselves (in public at least) to a Victorian ideal of abstinence and sexual

restraint. Sex and death thus remain deliciously entwined in public imaginings of tribal India.

Lurid pseudo-documentary accounts of the ‘night life of the tribals’ sell well on the streets of

Bombay, and credulous officials have in recent years banned photography, all foreign

researchers, and even many Indian researchers, from the region of Bastar state. The ‘truth’ and

real identity of this tribal area in the heart of the Indian subcontinent is thus likely to remain

shrouded in darkness.

APPENDIX 1.

Capt. J. MacVicar described the Hill Maria as follows:

Their hill tracts are called Oobooj Doso (which literally means the country of the people

without sense) and their villages and houses are similar to the those of the Bood and

Goomsur Khonds. In appearance they resemble the people of the low country and the

men are respectably clad, but few among the women have any garment beyond slight

apron of leaves. They are a remarkably peaceful race and never use their bows and

arrows save against the beasts of the forests. All disputes are settled by arbitration, the

elders of the tribes being the judges, punishment invariably consists of fines of a greater

or lesser number of pots of toddy according to the offence, the penalty is always drunk

on the spot by those concerned and contributes no doubt to the re-establishment of

cordiality. They are much afraid of death which accounts for their peaceful habits. Their

fields are not ploughed but dug up with a pickaxe, and after four or five years they

migrate to other areas in the same district and build fresh villages.

Their language is neither Khond nor Oriya , they only count as far as 20 and the

numbers appeared to be a mixture of Kond, Teloogoo, and Hindustanee. Of course they

have no written dialect. A few amongst them know Oriya.

It was pleasing to find that there did not exist ever have the tradition of human sacrifice.

In the Low country it was said to that the hill tribes and never sacrificed human beings

and for once the account was strictly true. The sites of their old and new villages were

carefully examined, and all the class were questioned, but no foreigners amongst them,

and unless they sacrifice their own offspring they have no means a procuring victims,

but is quite it is quite certain that nothing of the kind occurs in the mountain track.

The people are poor but it is not true that they pay no tribute. They annually gives the

Bastar ruler or his deputies four or five coolie loads of the produce of their lands, and if

in return friendly relations were cultivated with them and inducements held out to visit

the farm of the low country it would be more creditable than the present utter

indifference with which the Rajah regards this portion of his subjects.

MPCRO, Nagpur, Judicial Compilation no. 164 of 1851 to 1870: ‘Human Sacrifice’. No. 1448: Extract

from letter of Capt. MacVicar, offg. Agent in the hill tracts of Orissa to the GOI, 10th April 1855.

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ENDNOTES (INCOMPLETE…)

The page numbers below in fns. 17-58 refer to my notes. The bulk of the evidence is drawn from Judicial

Compilation no. 164 of 1851 to 1870: ‘Human Sacrifice’, found in the Madhya Pradesh Record Room in Nagpur.

The court proceedings and evidence quoted therein was originally given in either local Gond dialects, Halbi, Hindi

or Oriya and is mediated by official interpreters or translators in court.

i J.T. Blunt, 'Narrative of a route from Chinargur to Yentragoodum...1795', in Early European Travellers in the

Nagpur Territories, (Nagpur: Govt. Press, 1930).

ii Dr. Henry Spry firmly believed that in the 'wild And unreclaimed hill jungles' of central India '...they sacrifice

and eat their fellow-creatures. The fact of their doing so is so well attested that there can be no doubt of its

correctness': H. Spry, Modern India, vol. II, (London, 1837), p. 138.

iii NAI, Survey of India memoirs and field books: M320, Elliot Mission; M272, Route from Cuttack to Nagpur and

thence to Hoosingabad, by Wm. Campbell 1778; M163, Route from Nagpur to Cuttack 1782, by Thomas (diary of

events). See also C.U. Wills, British relations with the Nagur State in the 18th century, (Nagpur, 1926), which

contains extensive quotations from Survey records and embassies of this period.

iv IOR (Map Room), Routes in the Central Provinces, MSS 36: Report on the route from Chunargarh to Amarkant

by Lts. Waugh and Renny (1833) The belief that the Gonds practiced human sacrifice was one of the most potent

myths of this period. Although no evidence was ever found the allegation was frequently repeated up and until the

administration of Bastar came directly under the control of the British in 1911. The issues involved are discussed

in C. Bates, ' "The invention of perdition": human sacrifice and British relations with the Indian kingdom of Bastar

in the 19th century' and 'Dasehra and revolt: problems of legitimacy in 20th century Bastar', unpublished papers

presented at the Centre d'Études de l'Inde et de l'Asie du Sud in the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme in Paris,

April 1992.

v R. Jenkins, Report on the Territories of the Rajah of Nagpore, (Calcutta, 1827), p.29. Jenkins also noted that 'the

different tribes divide themselves, like their Hindu neighbours, into twelve and a half castes; and these, again,

branch out into subdivisions, denominated according to the number of the Penates, or household gods' (p.30).

vi See Jenkins, Report on the Territories of the Rajah of Nagpore, p. 140 et seq. Apparently the Gond Raja still

gave the Tika, or mark of royalty, to the Bhonsla princes on their accession to the Gaddi (or throne) and was

entitled to put his seal on certain revenue papers.

vii P.Vans Agnew, Report on the Subah or Province of Chhattisgarh, written in 1820, (Nagpur, 1920), p.5.

viii See Oddie 1995. J.H. Powell in ‘Hook-Swinging in India’, Folklore, xxv, June 1914, whilst writing about the

Santhals in Chota Nagpur, is the sole author to have speculated about links between hook swinging and human

sacrifice.

ix Oddie, 1995, p. 61.

x V. Elwin, Maria, Murder and Suicide (London: OUP, 1943)

xi MPCRO, Nagpur, Judicial Compilation no. 164 of 1851 to 1870: ‘Human Sacrifice’. No. 1448: Extract from

letter of Capt. MacVicar, offg. Agent in the hill tracts of Orissa to the GOI, 10th April 1855. This was the

description of ‘Lal Sahib’, Diwan of the kingdom of Bastar. For the description of Capt. J. MacVicar himself see

Appendix 1.

xii Nandini Sundar, ‘Divining Evil: the State and Witcraft in Bastar’, Gender, Technology & Development, 5 (3),

2001, p. 432. The fascinating examples of witchcraft accusations given by Sundar are (unfortunately for the

purposes of this essay) all contemporary.

xiii I was fortunate enough to witness such an Anga Deo festival in Parasgaon in 1986.

xiv Hyde Papers, Cambridge Centre for South Asian Studies.

xv Alfred Gell, ‘Exalting the king and obstructing the state:a political interpretation of royal ritual in Bastar District,

central India’ in A. Gell, The art of anthropology (1997 & 1999).

xvi Nandini Sundar, ‘Debating Dussehra and reinterpreting rebellion in Bastar district, central India’, Journal of the

Royal Anthropological Institute, vol. 7, no. 1 (March 2001), pp. 19-35.

xvii Singh, 1995; Fuller, 1988.

xviii See Bhopal notes, 4, pp. 33-34.

xix Muriah, Maliahs, Meriah: Worringly the word ‘Meriah’ seems to have had a number of other uses as well, and

may have simply been derived from the name of the so-called ‘Muriahs’ – one of the tribes with which the practice

was associated. According to Gautham Bhadra, Meriah meant ‘spy’ or go-between in the language of the not too

distant Kols of Chota Nagpur – see R. Guha (ed.), Subaltern Studies II (Delhi, 1988), p. 261, whilst many used the

word ‘Meriah’ or ‘Melliah’ to describe not the victim, but the kidnappee (extracts, p. 262). See also McNeill on

‘Joonas’ below fn.40. According to Campbell, there was also a large class of captured prisoners, who became

domestic serfs, many of them being ultimately absorbed into the families of their owners, in the manner described

by Indrani Chatterjee (1999). These serfs Campbell called ‘Possiapoes’ and were never, he says, used as sacrifices.

Overall there appears to be a number of confusions between anthropology and linguistics in this period, as well as

disturbing instances of dialectics between the two.

xx See Human Sacrifice typescript, p. 8.

xxi Oddie (1995) offers several examples of ambitious or over-zealous DC’s stepping beyond the bounds of policy

(and the law) and attempting to prohibit hook-swinging within their districts, only to be restrained by their superiors.

It was not until the later 19th century that more radical westernised Indian elites began to side with missionary

opinion and to pressurise the government to ban the practice altogether.

xxii William Sleeman, Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official, (London, 1915); Narrative by Major

General John Campbell of his Operations in the Hill Tracts of Orissa for the suppression of human sacrifice

(London, 1864), p. 158-160.

xxiii Ditto p. 3 &19, p. 31-32

xxiv P. 9

xxv P. 32

xxvi See J. Majeed, 'James Mill and the History of British India and Utilitarianism as a Rhetoric of Reform', Modern

Asian Studies, 24, 2 (1990); Sara Suleri, The Rhetoric of English India (Chicago, 1992).

xxvii P. 41

xxviii bot. P. 31.

xxix Elliott report, W. Huber, MA thesis, p. 104.

xxx 62, 76 & 81.

xxxi 80

xxxii See Wright (1863) and Strack (1909). Randle Jackson, Substance of the speech of Randle Jackson,

Esq. at a general court of the proprietors of East-India stock, on Wednesday, March 28th, 1827, on the

following motion; "that this court, taking into consideration the continuance of human sacrifices in India,

is of opinion that, in the case of all rites or ceremonies involving the destruction of life, it is the duty of a

paternal government to interpose for their prevention; and therefore recommends to the Honourable

Court of Directors to transmit such instructions to India as that court may deem most expedient for

accomplishing this object, consistent with all practicable attention to the feelings of the natives (London:

J. L. Cox, 1827).

xxxiii See Oddie (1995), chapter five.

xxxiv P. 64

xxxv P. 78

xxxvi See J.C.K. Menon's account from the 1930's (Hyde papers, Cambridge).

xxxvii PP. 18-19

xxxviii Republished in a single volume as J. Peggs, India’s Cries to British Humanity (London, 2nd edn. 1830) pp v-

vi.

xxxix With his usual confident racism Campbell commented: ‘Only let a sharp Hindoo or Mahomedan mind ascertain

what kind of information you want, and that it will be for his interest to procure it, and you may rest satisfied the

supply will fully equal the demand’ and then explains in detail how, in his view, a junior British official was led

completely up the garden path. Of course, opportunistic cunning of this sort was not a ‘Hindoo’ monopoly, and it is

equally possible that in both instances, MacVicar and the official concerned knew precisely what they were doing,

and were wilfully naive, secure in the knowledge that any blame for misinformation uncovered would invariably fall

on others, whilst any credit would be solely theirs alone. Campbell, ibid, p. 161.

xl P. 24 & P. 26

xli P. 18

xlii Compare eg. P. 5 and p. 7

xliii P. 39

xliv pp. 40-42 - quote from p.41

xlv P. 23

xlvi Details of local superstitions – p. 69

xlvii P. 56. McNeil described those intended for temple sacrifice as 'Joonas' in Jeypore in 1855 - see p. 26. The

youthful ‘joonas’ he encountered he assumed that were intended for sacrifice as no middle-aged 'joonas' (the normal

victims) could be found. The account is very bizarre, but upon hearing that allegations were being made the Raja of

Jeypore wisely denied all knowledge and begged that his territory be taken under the ‘care and administration’ of the

Company. Suspicion of any sort of sacrifice in Jeypore seems thereafter to have completely evaporated.

xlviii P. 8

xlix eg. pp. 4-6

l P. 4-6

li (pages 9-15, 17-18, 20-25, 29-) [Quote 9-13]

lii pp. 11-12, 13 & 14

liii Pp 12-13 Interesting features in this testimony include thet description of Danteshwari ‘eating’ her victims (as

mythologically does Kali), the somewhat sophisticated rendition into English by officials (intended presumably to

inspire confidence in the testimony), and the use of dates from the Hindu calendar by someone who was not

ostensibly Hindu. Unfortunately in this and all other transcripts we do not have the original vernacular testimony by

which to judge the accuracy of the translation.

liv P. 24

lv P .22

lvi P. 29

lvii pp. 23-24.

lviii pp 29-32

lix P. 24

lx P. 46

lxi p. 15, and p. 45-6

lxii P. 45

lxiii There are parallels here with the numerous and probably exaggerated reports of 100’s of 'liberated sacrifices'

made by John Campbell from Goomssoor in the hill tracts of Orissa in the 1850s.

lxiv P. 260-261.

lxv (p. 180 of xeroxed hand-written notes.)

lxvi The Quote is from 181-182 of the trial proceedings - evidence of torture

lxvii p.261-2

lxviii P. 24 – check date

lxix page 24 (described above). 1842?

lxx Luc de Heusch (1997).

lxxi Thomas (1973); Harris (1975, 1977); Ankarloo & Henningsen (1990); Larner (1984).

lxxii According to the State of India’s Environment report by the Centre for Science and the Environment in 1984-5,

the legal revenues alone amounted to some Rs. 470 million, compared with a development expenditure by the State

government of Rs. 50 million.

Attaining peace? Exploring self-harm behaviour in religious and non-religious contexts

Article

Jun 2023

Self-harm behaviour which is prevalent among various cultural/religious groups is considered to be normative and is viewed as an attempt to attain inner peace, contentment and relief. On the other hand, similar behaviour among individuals engaging in it for ‘non-religious’ purposes tends to be stigmatized and viewed as psychopathological. The present study sought to compare and contrast self-harm practices performed in religious and non-religious contexts, in terms of its emotional, physiological and situational antecedents and consequences. Self-harm behaviour in Islamic, Buddhist and Hindu religious texts was examined, and in-depth qualitative interviews were carried out with four young adults who had previously engaged in self-harm. Data obtained from both sources was thematically analysed, and it was observed that both practices are similar with respect to their goals and perceived affective outcomes: by providing the person with a cathartic experience, irrespective of the context, such behaviour aims to restore inner peace and enable the individual to seek psychological repentance. However, important differences were also observed, particularly with respect to the ‘lasting’ effects of the relief that is obtained. The study seeks to open up a dialogue about the coping value of self-harm behaviour both in religious and non-religious contexts, subsequently reduce the taboo associated with such activity, and facilitate psycho-education for alternatives to achieve psychological relief. Keywords: self-harm, religion, inner peace, culture, qualitative research.

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Full-text available

Mar 2019

D. Vincent Riordan

Suicide is widespread amongst humans, unique to our species, but difficult to reconcile with natural selection. This paper links the evolutionary origins of suicide to the archaic, but once widespread, practice of human sacrifice, which like suicide, was also unique to humans, and difficult to reconcile with natural selection. It considers potential explanations for the origins of human sacrifice, particularly René Girard's mimetic theory. This states that the emergence in humans of mimetic (imitation) traits which enhanced cooperation would also have undermined social hierarchies, and therefore an additional method of curtailing conspecific conflict must have emerged contemporaneously with the emergence of our cooperative traits. Girard proposed the scapegoat mechanism, whereby group unity was spontaneously restored by the unanimous blaming and killing of single victims, with subsequent crises defused and social cohesion maintained by the ritualistic repetition of such killings. Thus, rather than homicide being the product of religion, he claimed that religion was the product of homicide. This paper proposes that suicidality is the modern expression of traits which emerged in the ancestral environment of evolutionary adaptedness as a willingness on the part of some individuals, in certain circumstances, to be sacrificial victims, thereby being adaptive by facilitating ritualistic killings, reinforcing religious paradigms, and inhibiting the outbreak of more lethal conflicts. Using Hamilton's rule of inclusive fitness, it is argued that risk factors for suicide can be understood in terms of victim selection and social circumstances, which would have maximised inclusive fitness.

Interrogating Orientalism: Hindu Festivals and Travellers’ Tales in the Colonial Indian Ocean

Article

Jan 2023

Thimithi – the Tamil Hindu fire-walking ceremony has always attracted the attention of the curious and the thrill seeker and remains a tourist attraction as well as the performance of a solemn vow in many parts of the world where it continues to be enacted. A source of much speculation as to the participants’ apparent ability to withstand the pain of walking over hot coals, travellers’ often exaggerated accounts of eye witness attendance at such events regularly graced the columns of western journals in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This article focusses on an unusual investigation carried out in colonial Mauritius in mid-1874. The enquiry resulted from a published description of thimithi written by Nicolas Pike, former American consul on the island which caused concern at the colonial office in London, who asked for an explanation. This produced a set of reports, firstly by British police officers, and secondly, but more remarkably, by leading members of the Tamil community on Mauritius. Their detailed and occasionally humorous responses to the western orientalist gaze deftly unpick the absurdities and hypocrisies of the so-called ruling caste whilst their very involvement serves to complicate our understanding of the relationship between white settler and Indian ‘subject’ in the mid-Victorian colonial empire.

Democratic Despotism: Politics of Primitive Accumulation in India

Book

Jun 2022

Swagato Sarkar

Romantic Representations of the Subcontinent: “Subliming India” and Configuring Its Geopolitical Significance

Chapter

Jan 2012

Ashok Malhotra

Although British Indian Romantic narratives evolved out of the Oriental escapist verse tales of William Collins, the verse of William Jones and the British Romantic poets was notable for drawing upon and responding to specific colonial discourses and events taking place in colonial India. The interest of poets in issues of colonial governance was a feature that was sustained throughout this period, from Jones’s Hindu Hymns, to the British Romantic authors’ tales. There were a number of reasons why this was the case. First, poetry was perceived as a male and highbrow literary form and, consequently, poets were less shamefaced about tackling political and ideological discourses. Second, authors such as William Jones, Robert Southey, and Thomas Moore prided themselves on having become “experts” on India.

The Making of British India Fictions, 1772-1823

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Early Modern European Witchcraft: Centres and Peripheries

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Jun 1990

The history of witchcraft and sorcery has attracted a great deal of interest and debate, but until now studies have been largely from the Anglo-Saxon perspective. This book shows how that approach has blurred our understanding and definition of the issues involved, and sheds new light on witchcraft in England. What had hitherto been seen as peculiar to England is now shown to be characteristic of much of northern Europe. In ending the Anglo-Saxon monopoly of witchcraft studies, this book takes into account major new developments in the historiography of witchcraft - in methodology, and in the chronological and geographical scope of the studies. An immense amount of archival work by all the contributors has furnished a volume rich in new material and ideas, providing an indispensable guide to the subject. The themes treated include the relationship between witchcraft, law, and theology; the origins and nature of the witches' sabbath; the sociology and criminology of witch-hunting; and the comparative approach to European witchcraft.

Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official

Book

Mar 2012

W. H. Sleeman

Lieutenant-Colonel William Henry Sleeman (1788–1856) spent his entire career in India as an army officer and later as a magistrate and resident. He was best known for his fight to suppress the activities of 'thugs', bands of criminals who attacked, robbed and often murdered innocent travellers. By the time of the publication of this two-volume work in 1844, Sleeman had lived in India for more than thirty years. In Volume 1, he draws on his travels and experiences, and over 48 chapters he discusses myriad aspects of Indian life, including Hinduism, local festivals and folklore, the 'thugs' he tried to eradicate, disease and famine, and the natural world. He also details the lives of a wide range of Indians, from key historical figures such as Aurungzebe, the Mogul emperor, to the ordinary people he encountered, such as washerwomen and elephant-drivers.

The ghotul in muria society

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This thesis is a field study of the Muria of Bastar district, Madhya Pradesh, India. The Muria Gonds are a tribal (adivasi) group practicing paddy agriculture in a heavily forested area. Chapters 1 to 7 of the thesis describe the setting, and the major features of Muria social structure. Chapters 8 to 10 are devoted to the most distinctive and well-known Muria social institutions, the Ghotul dormitory for the unmarried boys and girls of the village.

The Camphor Flame: Popular Hinduism and Society in India

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Dec 1994
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Forest Traders: A Socio-Economic Study of the Hill Pandaram

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Man

The Symbolic Mechanisms of Sacred Kingship: Rediscovering Frazer

Article

Jun 1997

Luc de Heusch

Frazer was right to claim that kings in Africa were ritually put to death, sometimes as scapegoats for natural disasters (though the correct description of these personages is `sacred' not `divine'). Following Frazer's logic, this article views sacred kingship from a new perpective. The king's body is a `body-fetish', a repository of extraordinary magico-religous power bestowed on him in his installation ritual. This Ceremony makes the king a being apart (sometimes even a sacred monster), who articulates the natural and cultural orders. This ritual function is the foundation of the political function of royalty. The symbolic complex surrounding sacred kingship is the kernel of the State, but it appears already in small societies without centralized power. Under its various guises, sacred kingship is thus a phenomenon of great historical importance.

Exalting the King and Obstructing the State: A Political Interpretation of Royal Ritual in Bastar District, Central India

Article

Sep 1997

Alfred Gell

This article offers an interpretation of tribalism in peninsular India based on the political and economic characteristics of `tribal' kingdoms presided over by `Hindu' kings. These kingdoms were markedly egalitarian with a relatively direct relationship obtaining between the ruler and his tribal subjects, unmediated by the layers of officialdom characteristic of neighbouring Hindu and Muslim kingdoms. This has been typically explained as an evolutionary and historical consequence of `primitivism' reinforced by physical isolation and the operation of exclusionary criteria by Hindu society. However, this article argues that tribals have had more of an upper hand in negotiating status than is hitherto suspected and employs Appadurai's concept of `coercive subordination' to re-examine Hindu/tribal relations. By enacting an image of themselves as volatile, forest-dwelling primitives, the tribals ensured their relative freedom from state interference and inhibited the development of revenue-extracting institutions, in turn ensuring a state weak in secular function but ritualistically exalted. This is demonstrated by an analysis of the symbolism of the annual Dasara ritual in the old kingdom of Bastar, during which the Hindu king is subjected to an `abduction' by the tribal rabble before his confirmation as divine ruler. Such rituals suggest a fresh interpretation be given to the socalled tribal rebellions of 1876, 1910 and 1961 which occurred in the kingdom of Bastar.

The Man-Eating Myth : Anthropology & Anthropophagy

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Human Sacrifice: In History and Today

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James Mill's ‘The History of British India’ and Utilitarianism as a Rhetoric of Reform

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This paper is about the emergence of new political idioms in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in Britain, and how this was closely involved with the complexities of British imperial experience in India. In particular, I shall concentrate on the radical rhetoric of Utilitarianism expressed by Jeremy Bentham, and especially by James Mill. This rhetoric was an attack on the revitalized conservatism of the early nineteenth century, which had emerged in response to the threat of the French revolution; but the arena for the struggle between this conservatism and Utilitarianism increasingly became defined in relation to a set of conflicting attitudes towards British involvement in India. These new political languages also involved the formulation of aesthetic attitudes, which were an important component of British views on India. I shall try to show how these attitudes, or what we might call the politics of the imagination, had a lot to do with the defining of cultural identities, with which both political languages were preoccupied.

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