producing rain; for it can hardly be doubted that, originally at least, the tears were supposed to produce rain, not merely to prognosticate it. Similarly the custom of pouring water on the buried flesh of the Meriah was no doubt a rain-charm. Again, intrinsic supernatural power as an attribute of the Meriah appears in the sovereign virtue believed to reside in anything that came from his person, as his hair or spittle. The ascription of such power to the Meriah indicates that he was much more than a mere man sacrificed to propitiate a deity. Once more, the extreme reverence paid him points to the same conclusion. Major Campbell speaks of the Meriah as “being regarded as something more than mortal,”[1] and Major Macpherson says, “A species of reverence, which it is not easy to distinguish from adoration, is paid to him.”[2] In short, the Meriah appears to have been regarded as divine. As such, he may originally have represented the Earth deity or perhaps a deity of vegetation; though in later times he came to be regarded rather as a victim offered to a deity than as himself an incarnate deity. This later view of the Meriah as a victim rather than a god may perhaps have received undue emphasis from the European writers who have described the Khond religion. Habituated to the later idea of sacrifice as an offering made to a god for the purpose of conciliating his favour, European observers are apt to interpret all religious slaughter in this sense, and to suppose that wherever such slaughter takes place, there must necessarily be a deity to whom the slaughter is believed by the slayers to be acceptable. Thus their preconceived ideas unconsciously colour and warp their descriptions of savage rites.
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HUMAN VICTIM
CHAP.
