SOCA Now take this chaplet—wear it.
Strep. Why this chaplet ? Would'st make of me another Athamas, And sacrifice me to a cloud?' So also in the Heraclidx, Macaria, when offering herself as a victim to secure the triumph of the Athenians, exclaims: To the scene of death Conduct, with garlands crown me !' The translator of Euripides also observes that human sacrifices at their first origin appear to have consisted of virgins or young men in the state of celibacy, and in this respect the selection of Malati offers another analogy. The words translated above impious wretches, Pashanda and Chandala, mean aboriginal races, heretics, and out-castes. These epithets indicate little respect for the worshippers of Durga, and their application so publicly declared would lead us to infer that the author's sentiments were those of his a.ge. Jagaddahara states that in the rite two legal prohibitions are violated, of which he gives the text ; they are, 'Let him not eat from the leaf of the asclepias, nor slay a female nor child ; ' also, Females of every description of being, it is well known, are not to be slain.' In addition to the village deities noticed, the only goddess who requires victims is the Sakti of Siva, defined by her votaries to be the visible energy of the divine essence symbolized as a female. She is highly venerated during the nine days of the Dassera or Navaratri (the nine nights), at the close of which a sheep is generally offered in the houses of Rajputs and Mahrattas. The sacrifice of buffaloes on the occasion is very rare, and when it is offered, the ceremony takes place in temples sacred to this goddess, but sometimes in jungles and unfrequented parts. The goddesses and demons of the Sudras all accept bloody sacrifices, which are generally accompanied with the offering of spirituous liquors. As a general rule, the offering of *such sacrifices among the houses of educated Hindus, and in the superior temples, is observed with great secrecy.
Man, as a victim is still being offered up in many other parts of 'the world.
Human sacrific,es of the most extensive character, and ancestral worship, still, prevail in Dahomey, and in all Africa, a serpent-worship prevails. So many as 600 victims have been offered up at Dahomey at one time.
At Quendendes village in South Africa, Dr. Livingstone found human sacrifices frequent ; and when a chief dies, a number of his servants are slaughtered, to form bia company in the other world, a custom which the Barotsc also follow.
Also, in many of the Polynesian islands, up to the present date, human beings are sacrificed on commencing to build a war-canoe, a chief's house, or on the death of a chief.
In a chapter on human sacrifice in Dr. Norman Chever's book on Medical Jurisprudence, the author writes of human sacrifice by decapitation as an existing practice (pp. 408, 410), and says there are strong reasons for believing that there is scarcely a district in India in which human sacrifice is not still practised occasionally as a religious rite.' Doubtless, the old sanguinary expiatory ideas still lurk in the breasta of the masses, and in face of impending famine or pestilence, when men's apprehensions are most deeply stirred, the offering of a human victim to the power which can inflict hunger or disease, instead of the usual goat or buffalo, is not a violent or unnatural step. Ideas of this nature, formulated under the terme sacrifice and atone ment, are essential axioms in comparative religion, and their abandonment is only to be hoped for as part and parcel of a refinement of national thought and habit. To this end, general education, and more particularly education in the physical sciences, and the fostering of a belief in general laws and a benevolent God, are the great means, and the increasing power of the l3ritish in Italia may lead to the discontinuance of such barbarities.
The Reverend Mr. "Ward, writing regarding Bengal in the early part of the 19th century, mentions that at a village called Ksheeru, near the. town of Bardwau, human sacrifices were offered to the goddess Yoogadya, a form of Durga; at Kirectukoua, near Illurshidabad, to Kali; and at many other places. The discovery of murders in the name of religion was made by finding bodies with the heads cut off near the images ; and the natives well knew that these people had been offered in sacrifice. At the village of Serampur also, near Kutwa, before the temple of the goddess Tara, a human body was found without a head ; and inside the temple, different offerings, as ornaments, food, flowers, spirituous liquors, etc. All who saw it knew that a human victim had been slaughtered in the night, and search was made after the murderers, but in vain.