Stack, Grammar and Dictionary (both Bombay, 1849) ; E. Trumpp, Grammar (London and Leipzig, 1872) ; G. Shirt, Udharam Thavurdas, and S. F. Mirza, Sindhi-English Dictionary (Karachi, 1879) ; E. O'Brien, Glossary of the Multani Language (1st ed., Lahore, 1881; 2nd ed., revised by J. Wilson and Hari Kishen Kaul, Lahore, 1903) ; W. St. Clair Tisdall's Simplified Panjabi Gram mar (1889) also deals in an appendix with Lahnda; T. Bomford, "Rough Notes on the Grammar of the Language spoken in the Western Panjab" in Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. lxiv. pt. i. pp. 290 ff. (1895) ; "Pronominal Adjuncts in the Language spoken in the Western and Southern Parts of the Punjab," ib. vol. lxvi. pt. i. pp. 146 ff. (1897) ; J. Wilson, Grammar and Dictionary of Western Panjabi as spoken in the Shahpur District (Lahore, 1899) ; A. Jukes, Dictionary of the Jatki or Western Panjabi Language (Lahore and London, i9oo) ; G. A. Grierson, "Vracada and Sindhi" in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, p. 47 (1002) ; R. T. Turner, "The Sindhi Recursives" in Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies, vol. iii. 301 (1920 ; "Cerebralization in Sindhi," J.R.A.S. P. 555 (1924) vol. viii. of the Linguistic Survey of India contains full particulars in great detail.
a man who for trifling payment was believed to take upon himself, by means of food and drink, the sins of a deceased person. The custom was once common in many parts of England and in the highlands of Scotland. Usually each village had its official sin-eater to whom notice was given as soon as a death occurred. He at once went to the house, and there, a stool being brought, he sat down in front of the door. A groat, a crust of bread and a bowl of ale were handed him, and after he had eaten and drunk he rose and pronounced the ease and rest of the dead person, for whom he thus pawned his own soul.
In the earlier form the sin-eater was taken into the death chamber, and a piece of bread and possibly cheese, having been placed on the breast of the corpse by a relative, usually a woman, was afterwards handed to the sin-eater, who ate it in the presence of the dead. He was then handed his fee and at once hustled and thrust out of the house amid execrations and a shower of sticks, cinders, or other missiles. The custom of sin-eating is generally supposed to be derived from the scapegoat in Leviticus xvi. 21, 22. A symbolic survival of it was witnessed in 1893 at Market Drayton, Shropshire. After a preliminary service had been held over the coffin in the house, a woman poured out a glass of wine for each bearer and handed it to him across the coffin with a "funeral biscuit." In Upper Bavaria sin-eating long survived; a corpse cake was placed on the breast of the dead and then eaten by the nearest relative.