The Amman worshippers almost all practise and believe in the efficacy of demon or devil or evil spirit rites, amongst which sacrifices always form part. The sacrifice of the cock to the demon Peisachi, in this respect similar to the devil-worshippers in Kurdistan, is practised by all the non-Aryan people in the south of India, whether of the Brahmanieal Hindu persuasion, or of the servile non-Hindu people.
Madan is very little known, hit with a class of Tamil magicians is deemed a very great and powerful demon. He is generally courted by the Pariah, Chuckler, Lubbai, and uneducated Muhammadans, who offer beef and arrack to obtain his good-will and favour.
Living sacrifices of animals are an essential part of the worship of all the tutelary village goddesses in Southern India,' as also of the goddesses of cholera, smallpox, etc. Their names are various amongst the several Tamil, Telugu, Cauarese, and Mahratta nations. Ammun, Amoor Amma, Bal Amma, Poch Amma, Yellamma, Marri Ammun, Ai, Satwai Devi, Sitla Devi, and others, amongst whom, everywhere, Bal Ainma and her worshippers seem dreaded the Pariahs who worship other of the Ammun goddesses refusing to intermarry with her devotees. The Yelin worshippers also are dreaded as sorcerers, and their wives are distinguishable by the mode in which they attire themselves with their saree, which they bring from behind, and from left to right. Satwai, amongst the Mahrattas, is a great goddess, to whom children's hair is devoted, the front part offered to her, the back part being retained till some other goddess possess tho body (ang bharave), such as the smallpox goddess or cholera goddess Marri-ai.
In the bloody sacrifices of these non-Aryan raceS, the goat is the usual victim. The rite is ordinarily performed only once a year, when friends join to offer a goat, and make a feast of its flesh afterwards. At all tho sacrificial oblations, bread and cereal grains are also offered, and used in the after-feasting. Thousands of sheep and fowls are annually sacrificed at Periya palayam, a village about 30 miles from Madras, and multitudes of people attend from that city and the neighbouring villages, to celebrate the yearly festival, which takes place in the bright half of the month of Adi. Large numbers of buffaloes were, until the middle of the lllth century, offered at the funeral rites of the Toda of Ootacamund, but the Madras Government put a stop to such wholesale massacre, and restricted the rite to the killing of only two animals at a time,--a mea,sure which the Toda race' viewed with unaffected alarm and dislike, as likely to decrease their children and cattle. In 1883, a
race at Kotagherry applied for permission to sacrifice a sambur. The Irular race of the Neil gherries sacrifice to their deities a he-goat or cock, by cutting the victim's throat, and throwing it to the idol. This is a winnow or fan, which they call Mahri, and is evidently the emblem of Ceres ; and at a short distance in front of the rude thatched shed, which serves as a temple, are two rude stones, one called Moshani, the other Konadi Mahri, but which are subordinate to the fan occupying the interior of the temple. Human sacrifices are still, in Southern India, deemed to be requisite to mollify goddesse,s and demons who guard hidden treasure, and who are believed to have a partiality for the blood of a pregmant woman, especially of one who is conceived of twins, and to the firstborn of the goldsmith caste ; indeed, in popular belief, in the year 1860, one of the latter was supposed to have' been very recently offered. There is a shrine of Vatrappa nachiyar, the tutelary goddess of Tiruvattur, a village to the north of Madras, on the road to Ennore ; this is situate in a part of the great and much-frequented pagoda of Tiyagaraia Semi, for which the village is celebrated in ancient Hindu books. Tito sacrifice now offered them is that of a male buffalo, but la conducted with great secrecy, and people aro not generally adtnitted to witness it. Indeed, the dread of witnessing the sacrifice and its attendant cerentoniea aro so great, that pregnant wotnen are, if poasible, kept out of the village for fear of abortion, which ia believed to be the certain result should the shrieks of the men who carry tho mktabali fall on their ears. This raktabali (Rskta, blood ; Bali, aacrifice) is assumed to bo the food for devils and the attendant spirits of the goddess, and consists of rice mixed with the sacrificial blood. It is carried only during the last day of the annual festival of tho goddess, after midnight, in an earthen pot of a peculiar shape and design, by men specially allotted to the duty. They run and shriek and howl in tho street to scare away tho devils and evil spirits, and halt at the corners and windings, and throw balls of this blood-mixed rice to the demons, etc. It is considered to be an evil omen for any man to meet them in their rounds, as fever, madness, and disease might befall him.