The Bali is any offering to an idol, such as that of flowers or the presentation of food to all created beings, by throwing grains up into the air, or offering goats and other animals in sacrifice.
The presentation is called bali-dan or hali-danam. The offerings to Vialinu consist of rice, inilk, cunls, fruits, flowers, and inanimate forms ; but to the terrific forms of Siva, or bis consort Durga, livin,g creatures, sheep, goats, buffaloes, and human beings are offered up, in which case the heads aro given to the sacrificial priests, and the bodies are carried away. The Ostyak, when they kill an animal, rub some of the blood on tho mouths of their idols. Even this seems at length to bo replaced, as Mr. Taylor has suggested, by red paint, and tho sacred stones in India, as Colonel Forbes Leslie has shown, are everywhere orniunented with red lead. In many cases it seems to be a necessary portion of the ceremony that the victim should be eaten by those present. Thus in India, when the sacrifice is over, the priest comes out and distributes part of the articles which had been offered to the idols. This is received as holy, and is eaten immediately.
The terms used for the sacrifice are Bali, Tam. ; Gavn, TEL. ; Yagnya Magha, SANSK. When an ox, lamb, or fowl is offered up in sacrifice to a Devi or Mari female deity by the Sudras, the first two words are used. The words Yagnya Maglia are used to indicate a sacrifice celebrated only by the Brahmans on oecaaions in which they offer goats and not any other animals. In the present day, the cow is not offered in sacrifice by any Hindu sect or race, but in the marriage ceremony of some parts of the country, where a, mileh cow, surabhi, is released on the intercession of a barber, sufficient remainsto show that the rite was formerly practised at marriages for the sake of hospitality. The male buffalo is, however, frequently sacrificed, sometimes in considerable numbers; and only in 1859, the government of Madras ordered the ma,gis trate of the Krishna division to forbid the cruel rite to Ammavaru, wherein buffaloes were impaled alive to appease that angry goddess, and avert cholera. On that occasion, in a small village, 12 to 24 buffaloes were sacrificed, 11I3 also several hundred sheep, and the heads of the sacrificed buffaloes were carried in procession on the heads of men.
Every hamlet of the southern parts of the Peninsula has its own object of adoration, village deities, always supposed to be a goddess. Amongst names given to it are- /talcs] Am ma. . Tripura- aundari„ Karikatta.
Poni Amma, or or tho beautiful I Tanthoniamma. gold mother. of three citiea. Dandumari.
Kani Amma. Osuramma. 3fallamma.
Ycgata, or sole Sellamma. Chinnamma.
mother. Yellamma. A.mmanamma. Mutialarnma, or Padavettu Amma Choundeswari.
pearl mother. Tulukan Ammo. Vadivatta. Paleri Amma, or lifuttumari.
1 Nagattamma.
great goddess. Poteramma.
They are called Amman, Amma, Aniani, and Ai, all of them meaning mother. The villagers believe that these goddesses protect them from sickness and losaes, and that their worship averts such or mitigates them. A pujali or pujari, a worshipping priest, of the Sudra caste, is appointed for her daily worship. Ilo anoints her daily,
, and puta ashes on her head, really on the top of the stone, for it is not an image, being entirely without shape. In a small pot he cooks rice, which lie collects from the villagers in turn, presents it to the idol, and then takes it to his own home. Ile breaks a cocoanut in front of the idol, to which he offers it. But the one-half he keeps for himself, and gives the other to the families from whom he collected the fruit. The villagers make VOWS to their goddess to offer up to her fowls and sheep in sacrifice, if she will fulfil their desires. Once a year, the villagers collect money by subscription, and celebrate a feast in honour of their goddess, during which sheep and fowls are largely saciificed. Many of the Sudra, and the entire servile tribes in the south of India, have the fullest faith in their respective village goddesses. When they or their children are overtaken by sickness, they seek the idol, and consult the pujari, who sings songs, affects t,o hear the Amman's voice, and then announces to the worshipper the offering that must be pre sented. If cholera break out, it is not unusual for seine neighbouring village deity suddenly to rise into great importance, and the sacrificial rite is then almost unceasingly performed. The Hindus, too, have even personified this pestilence into a goddess, whom they have named Maha Kali, the Great Kali, also Mari-Ai, the Death Mother, and believe that if they neglect her worship she destroys them by tho disease. Indeed, gods are still in process of establishment, and smallpox and cholera have thu,s been personified. Maha-Kali of Ujjain being the goddess of cholera, and Mari Amman of the Tamil people, the Sitla Amman of Western India, a smallpox deity. 1Vhen a person is attacked with smallpox, they believe that the goddess has taken possession of the sick man. They entertain a great dread of this goddess. While in the house, the sexes remain apart until recovery, and until the sick has been purified by ablution. They place the leaves of the margosa tree beside the sick person, because the goddess is supposed to delight in this tree. They give cooling food, but employ neither internal nor external remedies, in rever ence for the deity. The women of the household offer rice flour mixed with jagari, or coarse sugar, and black gram (Pairu, TAM., Pesalu, TEL.), before the patient, in honour of the goddess, and after wards distribute offerings to Sudras and others. On the seventh day, i.e. what medical' men call the 15th day, the invalid is bathed in cold wat,er, and the whole body rubbed with a pasty mixture of leaves of the margosa (Azadirachta Indica) mixed with turmeric, and on the same da,y rice mixed with curds are distributed to Sudras. If in the virulence of the disease an eye be lost, it is attributed to something having been done displeasing to the goddess. The goddess indeed is supposed to appear in three forms, as Tattu animavaru or Chinnamavaru, i.e. little small goddess ; Peddammavaru, or great goddess ; and Pairammavaru, or goddess of green gram, the two last of which are most feared.