to the west, of which New Caledonia and New Guinea are the chief: they are of much darker complexion and have somewhat woolly hair. It seems probable that the Malay Polynesians started from Burmah and Siam by the Peninsula of Malacca, and thence made their way to the eastern Pacific. Whence Whence sprung those of the darker race, if not from the aborigines of India? Any one who has seen a band of Dhangor Koles cleaning the streets of Calcutta will at once acknowledge their perfect resemblance to the natives of New Guinea; and that any one of the former people could have stood as a model to Captain Erskine, for the sketches which he has given of the latter, in his recent work on the Pacific. May it not then be, that it was from the aborigines of India pushed forward by their Hindu conquerors, that the Archipelago and Western Pacific received at least a portion of their swarthy and barbarous population: and that coming last they drove before them to the eastward such of the Malay-speaking islanders, as they found already there?

THE KHOND RELIGION.

The Khonds, being ignorant, are excessively superstitious. All internal diseases (the chief of which among them are fever, enteritis and smallpox) are treated as the fruits of the displeasure of the deity. To effect a cure no medicine whatever is taken, but various incantations are performed by the priests. They thoroughly believe in witchcraft, magic and sorcery: and various punishments, even to death itself, are inflicted on those who are supposed to injure others by magic arts. All tigers which kill men, are considered to be men who, through the agency of a god, have transformed themselves into the shape of that animal. Ugly old women are, among them, as elsewhere, often set down as witches.

The Khonds, though a barbarous tribe, possess a religion; though unlike the mythology of their neighbours, the Hindus, theirs is rather simple. They worship many inferior deities; amongst whom several of the Hindu gods and goddesses seem to find a place. But a few particular deities occupy the chief share of their veneration, and are the chief objects of their worship. The earth being the great source of subsistence to the Khonds, they reckon the Earth-goddess as one of these chief divinities. and the functions, attributed to her, are just such as express the fears and desires of an agricultural people. As constant quarrels arise between the tribes for the possession of land, it is natural that they should have, like the Romans, a god of boundaries, in order to define with the highest sanc

tions the borders of each tribe. The Sun and Moon from their position and uses, are of course constant objects of worship. Continually engaged in wars and feuds, they honour most highly a god of war: every village has a grove to him, wherein his appropriate symbol, a piece of iron, is buried. Partly dependent on the chase for their support, they have a god of hunting. Liable to the small-pox, they recognise, as the Hindus have done, a god presiding over that disease and offer sacrifices to appease him whenever it appears. Like causes have given rise to a Forest god, a god of Rivers, another of Fountains: each hill and each hamlet have their separate deities. Thus we see that the causes which gave rise to such divinities in olden times, have produced them likewise among the Khonds. "As face answereth to face in a glass, so doth the heart of man to man.' The priests among the Khonds form a distinct class, and they alone can perform all the ceremonies appointed in public or private worship: at births, sicknesses, marriages and deaths, they alone can officiate. They receive no fees, and no rank: even their share of the land is tilled by themselves: honour is professedly their only reward: but their very position, as the leaders of superstition, cannot fail to give them a predominant influence in the councils and proceedings of their tribes.

HUMAN SACRIFICES.

One particular of their worship, already alluded to, demands a special mention. It forms a most important item in their opinions and practices, and indeed is one of those essential points, whose influence is felt throughout the whole framework of their society. The earth goddess, on whose favour (as they think) their very subsistence depends, is worshipped with HUMAN SACRIFICES. Once," it is said, "the earth was an unstable mass, unfit for cultivation: the goddess said, 'Let human blood be spilt,' and a child was sacrificed. The earth became fertile, and the goddess ordained that man should repeat the rite and live." By this legend the sacrifice is dated from the very origin of agriculture, and the Khond believes that its continued observance is essential to the produce of his food. Hence the pomp and ceremony with which it is celebrated.

These sacrifices are performed both publicly and privately. The public sacrifices take place in the spring when the earth is sown, and at harvest, when it is reaped: others also are offered while the crop is growing. The occurrence of a great pestilence in society; the ravages of wild beasts; or any thing which happens peculiarly unpropitious to the person, the

family or the property of the various Patriarchs of the tribes, are all circumstances which call publicly for these dreadful offerings. They are offered privately by a particular family for similar reasons: fear, not love, prompting their performance.

The victims, which are of both sexes are known by the name of мERIAS. They are not native Khonds of the district where they are sacrificed; but are usually children from the plains or from distant localities. They are procured by some of the servile Hindus already mentioned as settlers among the Khonds, viz. by those of the weaver caste. By the Khonds these persons are called Dombango; by the Hindus, Panwa. Some of this class are attached to every Khond village and perform various offices for the community. They weave, trade in cloth and steal; they are the public messengers and musicians; and are always employed to procure Meria victims. These Merias they sometimes steal from the Oriyas; sometimes they buy them; sometimes they get them from distant sections of the Khond themselves in times of scarcity; sometimes they get them from families of Panwas like themselves; and not unfrequently they sell their own children. Many of the children that I saw in the Cuttack and Balasore schools were said to be of this class: and two or three in Balasore are apparently Sontals. The victims, when procured, are brought blindfold into the village where they are to remain: those intended for public sacrifice are lodged in the house of the abbaya. They are not immediately sacrificed; but are kept and fed with great care, it may be for several years. Males are sometimes married to females like themselves, in which case their offspring are born to the parents' condition. In some cases they are married not long before the sacrifice, and the marriage is merely nominal. If possible, the actual position and prospects of these Meriás are concealed from them; so long as they are unsuspicious and live contented in the family which has charge of them, they are free and honoured: permitted to wander every where and welcomed as sacred in every house. If however, they exhibit any signs of fear or any desire to escape, they are chained up. One boy in the Cuttack school who had been thus confined before the officers delivered him, had a ring on his ancle, so tight that it could not be taken off without being filed through. Another informed us, that being afraid after seeing a sacrifice, he was told by the people with whom he lived; "Why should you fear; nothing will happen to you, you are our son: we shall never kill you." It is not easy, however, to keep such a matter thoroughly secret for any length of time, and before the sacrifice at least, it becomes openly known to the victims themselves.

X

The public sacrifices are always arranged by the patriarch and the priest. All the community gather together to celebrate them; all feuds are forgotten and all labour is laid aside. The manner in which the sacrifice is performed appears to vary in certain details in different districts; but substantially it is the same in all. The great festival of the year, called Tonki, occurs at the full moon in the month of Poush, about the end of December; it lasts for three days; and the sacrifices are more numerous than on other occasions. On the first day the whole community give themselves up to feasting and riot. On the second, in one district, as preliminary to the chief sacrifice, a victim is suspended by his neck and heels lengthwise over a trench, is then gashed by the priest in six places, then beheaded, and buried on the spot. In most places, however, on the second day, there is a grand procession. The appointed victim well dressed, is led forth to the Meriá grove; all the people, decked out in their hill finery, with their bear skins and peacock feathers, accompany it with drums, dancing, shouting, and singing some sacred song, in which the victim is devoted to the earth-goddess. One

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of these songs was sung before us by the Khond boys in the Cuttack school it contained among other things the following unmistakeable announcement; "We have fed you long, we can support you no more; to-morrow you will be cut to pieces." The second night is passed, like the first day, in revelling and feasting. On the third day, after a renewal of the rioting, the whole village bring the unhappy Meriá forth to the spot already pointed out by the priest as a propitious one. A split bamboo is planted in the ground; and the victim, quite intoxicated and unconscious, is fastened within the cleft, either by the throat or chest, the crowd standing eagerly round. On a given signal, they rush on the wretched being, and with their knives and axes, cut out small pieces from the living sufferer, taking care to avoid any vital parts, until death takes place. The whole process occupies about twenty minutes. Each piece cut from the victim is immediately carried by its possessor to his fields and deposited in the earth. Great value is attached to the first piece and a proportionate eagerness is evinced to obtain it. Such is the account which we heard in Cuttack from the lips of a rescued Meriá, who had seen the sacrifice five times.

The number of Meriás yearly sacrificed before the British war in Goomsur, must have been very large. It appears that nearly the whole of Khondistan is more or less infected with the evil: and that it prevails to the greatest extent in the districts most removed from the influence of

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the East India Company. Not only the Maliás above named, and which are best known to the English, but Jeypore and the country southward as far as the Godavery, are all involved in the awful crime. Westward again by Bustar, the Khonds go far into Nagpore and into the state of Hydrabad: and they have carried the rite with them. In Bustar it is known that the sacrifices have been enormous. On one occasion about the year 1826, when the Rájá set out to visit the Rájá of Nagpore twenty-five grown men were all sacrificed at one time. In all this immense extent of country stretching far away to the westward, not one voice was ever raised against its horrid barbarity. A variety of causes also have been allowed to call for this sacrifice. It is not only a single annual festival, that demands its performance, but public and private calamities of various kinds, in addition to the regular return of the seasons of sowing and harvest, have been held to justify it. It would seem then that hundreds of Meriás have been annually required to meet this large demand; and the great number, found on different occasions and given up to the Government officers, confirm such a supposition. Three hundred have at one time been brought away even from small districts. Thanks be to God that this dreadful form of human guilt is now drawing to a close!

The horrid rite of human sacrifice does not prevail throughout every single district of the Khond country. It seems that in the Maliás below the gháts it is not observed at all. In the northern Maliás above the gháts, that is, in Boad, the Bara and Atháro Mutás, in Hodzoghoro, it seems very general; as well as in some parts of Chinna Kimedy, and also in the unknown territories stretching far to the west. In the southern districts, another practice pretty generally exists, of a different, but not less destructive kind, that of FEMALE INFANTICIDE. Apparently the latter custom has no reference to religious feeling or law; but finds its root in the civil institutions of the people, especially in the expenses connected with marriage, and the great freedom of divorce allowed to the Khond wives. The Khonds of these districts always allege poverty as the cause; as did the Rájputs of Upper and Western India, who till lately practised a similar custom. A thousand children at least must have been destroyed annually, in two or three of these districts alone. Whole villages have been met with, without a single female child.

Such are the appalling facts, and such the horrid practices which were revealed to the Government of India by its zealous officers, who superintended the Khond country: practises which existed unknown and unchecked, till less than twenty years ago, in a country within four