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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[OCTOBER, 1878.
classification and titles, and of ceremonies re- Again, in former days self-immolation was gulating admission (to which your correspondent common. Many immolated themselves at the great briefly refers), it embraced also some notice of the car-festivals, voluntarily throwing themselves several qualifications required and duties per under the enormous wheels, not only of the car formed.
R. M. of Jag ản nâth at Puri, in Orissa, but of other
idol-cars also A CASE OF SAMADH IN INDIA.
I found similar cars attached to every large BY MONIER WILLIAMS, D.C.L., BODEN PROFESSOR pagoda in the south of India. Some of them are OF SANSKRIT AT OXFORD.
80 large and heavy that they require to be supIt may interest some of your readers if I give a ported on sixteen wheels, and on a particular day brief account of a case of Samadh which has re- once a year they are drawn through the streets by cently occurred in the district of Kaira (Kheda), thousands of people. Every now and then persons in Gujarat. The particulars were furnished to me are crushed under the wheels; for our civilization by Mr. Frederick Sheppard, the energetic Colleo- has tended to the increase of religious gatherings tor, in whose camp I stayed twice during my Indian among the natives, by creating facilities of comtravels. Permit me, however, to introduce the munication, and the best government cannot always narrative by a few remarks about sacrifice, iramo. prevent accidents. lation, and self-torture, all of which were once Self-immolation in other ways was once extencommon in India.
sively prevalent. Arrian, it is well known, deIn what may be called the Brahmanical period, scribes how, in the time of Alexander the Great, which succeeded the Vedic period of Hinduism, a man named Kalanos-one of the sect of Indian buman sacrifice must have prevailed. This is suffi- wise men who went naked--burned himself upon a ciently evident from the story of Sunah sep hain pile. This description is like that of the selfthe Aitareya-brahmana. It is even believed by many cremation of the ascetic Sarabhanga in Ramdthat the sects called s Aktas (or Tantrika s) yana iii. 9. There are some sand-hills in the formerly ate portions of the flesh and drank the Satpura range dedicated to the god Siva,--supblood of the victims sacrificed at their socret orgies. posed as Mahakala to delight in destruction, Human sacrifices, however, were probably rare, from a rock on which many youths have precipitwhile the sacrifice of animals became universal. ated themselves, because their mothers, being The first idea of sacrifice seems to have been that without children, have dedicated their first-born of supplying the deities with nourishment. Gods sons to the god. and men all feasted together. Then succeeded the With regard to the immolation of the faithful notion of the need of vicarious suffering, or life for wife (commonly called satt) who followed her life, blood for blood. Some deities were believed to husband in death, and burned herself on his funeral thirst for human blood, and the blood of animals pile, everywhere in India, I saw scattered about in Was substituted for that of men. One of the effects various places monuments erected over the ashes of Buddhism was to cause a rapid diminution of of satis ; and everywhere such monuments are still animal sacrifice. It is now rarely seen except at regarded with the greatest veneration by the the altars of the goddess Kali, or of forms and people. near relations of Kálf (such as the Grama-devátás Happily we put a stop to this practice in 1829, (village mothers), and at the altars of the tutelary though we had previously sanctioned it under deity A y en er, and at devil-shrines in the south. certain regulations, believing that we ought not to I myself saw very few animals sacrificed even to interfere with an ancient religious custom. In the bloody goddesses, though I took pains to visit one year an official report of 800 widows burnt was them on the proper days.
received at Calcutta. Between 1815 and 1828 the Other forms of immolation were once common average varied from 300 to 600 per annum. in India. The Thags maintained that they sacri- We have also prevented the burying alive of fioed their victims to the goddess K&li. Now that lepers, and others afflicted with incurable diseases, Thagism has been suppressed by ns, a good deal which was once universally prevalent in the of datura-poisoning is practised by the same class Panjab, and common in some other parts of India. of people. The killing of female infants once pre- Of course, leprosy in India, as in other Eastern vailed extensively in the Panjab and Rajputana, countries, is a kind of living death. Lepers are owing to the difficulty of providing daughters with excluded from society, and can get no employment; suitable husbands, and the immense expenses
and they often gave themselves up of their own entailed by nuptial festivities.
accord to be buried alive, the motive simply being 1 The son of Siva by Mohini, also called Hari Hars.- ... Ind. Ant. vol. VI. pp. 245-6, 884-6; and Plutarch's ED.
Alexander, 65.-ED.
