hair of his head; four assistants hold his outstretched arms and legs, the body being suspended horizontally over the grave, with the face towards the earth. The priest then repeats an invocation, hacking, at intervals, the back part of the shrieking victim's neck. The victim is then decapitated, the body thrown into the grave, and the head left suspended from the post till devoured by wild beasts.

Several details in the above frightful proceedings should be kept in mind, as associating the practice of Meriah Sacrifice (although it may be only accidentally) with other descriptions of murder and sacrifice-these are, especially, the sacrifice of three; the compression of the chest or neck with bamboos (bansdollah); and the infliction of a wound on the back of the neck—also a practice in Bengal, which will be referred to presently.

The Garrows have a barbarous custom of offering a Human Head in some of their religious rites.

Reference is made, in the Reports of the Calcutta Nizamut Adawlut,* to the conviction of four Garrows who murdered two women for the purpose of obtaining their Heads, which were required by one of their countrymen for some superstitious ceremony.

Again, in 1850, a party of Garrows entered the house of a man, in the Mymensing district, and cut off his Head, which, it appeared, they required to be buried with the daughter of their chief. They were opposed by another person, sleeping in the house. They wounded him so severely that he died three days afterwards. The police succeeded in arresting three of the Garrows, one of whom was sentenced to death.

The Dyaks of Borneo also have a practice of offering Human Heads for the propitiation of malign spirits.

* Vol. v., p. 164, as cited in Beaufort's Digest of the Criminal Law. † Police Report, L. P., for 1850, p. 32.

The subject of Human Sacrifice by Decapitation—a practice which certainly still exists in this Presidency-is of such great importance that every fact bearing upon it deserves to be collected and carefully weighed. The following details, from the Rev. Mr. Ward's invaluable work on the Customs of the Hindus, will be found to illustrate very clearly the recent cases of Human Sacrifice which succeed them. Ward mentions that, at Chitpore, about the year 1788, a decapitated body was found near the image of Chittreshwaree, which, in the opinion of the spectators, had evidently been offered, on the preceding night, to this goddess. One of the Pundits of the College of Fort William assured him that, about the year 1770, at the village of Soomara, near Gooptipara, he saw the head of a man, with a lamp placed on it, lying in a temple before the image of the goddess Siddheshwaree, and the body lying in the road opposite the temple. He adds that, about seven years previous to the publication of his work, there was found a human body without a head, lying before the temple of the goddess Tara, at the village of Serampore, near Kutwa. In the inside of the temple were different offerings-as ornaments, food, flowers, spirituous liquors, &c. 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.

After reading the above facts, we can entertain but little doubt as to the nature and motive of the crime committed in the following instances.-In January 1851, a Hindu Priest was tried, at Midnapore, for murdering a woman. The woman's son made search for her, but the prisoner drove him away, declaring that he had sacrificed his mother, and would sacrifice him. The neighbours then collected, and deceased's head was found, in a room in the prisoner's house where the thakoor was kept, placed before the idol and covered with flowers. The body was in another room, The prisoner

stated that he had killed the deceased with a sword; that the thakoor Saligram had appeared to him in a dream, and had ordered him to offer up a human sacrifice; and, in obedience, he seized the woman, who had come to his house, and cut off her head. No satisfactory proof of insanity being given, fanaticism was not admitted as an extenuation of his crime. He was, therefore, sentenced to death.*

In the previous year, three Brahmins of Baraset, near Calcutta, on the Kalee Poojah, were sacrificing a goat to that goddess. One of them, after cutting off the head of the goat, deliberately cut off the head of his brother, who was holding the animal, with the sacrificial knife; he then attacked and wounded his nephew. The other persons running off, he escaped; but was arrested some months afterwards, and sentenced to death.†

In June 1854, a case of this kind at Saugor. The prisoner and the deceased were cousins, and had been staying at Bundukpore for some days, worshipping at a celebrated shrine dedicated to Mahadeo. On the day of the occurrence, they went to the 'munder' (as the defendant stated), for the purpose of offering up their heads. Shortly after their entrance, the havildar of the temple, on following them, found the head of the deceased on the sacred stone (pindee), the defendant being in the act of cutting his own throat with a sword, and threatening to cut down any one who approached. It was deemed necessary by the Court to inflict such punishment as might deter others from following such an example. The prisoner was therefore sentenced to imprisonment for life in transportation beyond seas.‡

* Nizamut Adawlut Reports, vol. iv, part 1 of 1851, p. 24.

† Police Report, L. P., for 1850, p. 63.

Nizamut Adawlut Reports, N. W. P., June 1854, p. 762. See also Nizamut Adawlut Reports, vol. i., p. 13; vol. iv., p. 117; vol. iii., p. 209.

A very extraordinary case of what appears to have been a deliberate Human Sacrifice, was tried at Seebsaugur, in Assam, in the same year. One Gogoieram, considered by his neighbours as a good-tempered man, having a child ill with fever, said that he was going to the jungles for medicinal herbs and to consult augury as to the fate of his infant. He took with him a neighbour's son, seven or eight years old, who had always appeared to be a favorite of his. He confessed that, after proceeding about 200 yards from his own house, the idea entered his head of killing the boyhe hesitated for a time, and then struck the child a single blow with his dao, almost completely severing the head from the trunk-then, putting his mouth to the gullet, he drank the blood. After this, cleaning his weapon carefully on the grass, he went home. On inquiry being made for the child, he said that he had gone to fetch firewood. He then took a meal of rice; and, afterwards, having returned to the place where the body lay, went thence into the jungles to conceal himself. The officer who tried the case came to the conclusion that he deliberately sacrificed the boy to effect the recovery of his own sick child, thinking it would be acceptable to the deotas, or spirits, or the goddess Kalee. Many of the tribes in Assam offer up sacrifices of animals for worldly prosperity; and, in some instances, human beings have been sacrificed to avert sickness or other ills. The medical evidence, that of the neighbours, and even the testimony of the prisoner's mother, all went to prove that the prisoner was, and had always been of sound mind. He was condemned to death.*

* Nizamut Adawlut Reports, 23rd Sept. 1854, p. 412.

RECOGNITION OF WOUNDS INFLICTED AFTER DEATH.

Bodies sent in to the Civil Surgeon for examination very frequently present marks of gnawing by Insects, Fish and Vermin, or have been partially devoured by Dogs, Jackals, Crows and Vultures:-some of the appearances thus caused, may interfere considerably with our means of forming an accurate opinion upon the case.

The generality of bodies are found to have been attacked by Ants. The most destructive of these are the small red kind. Where the body has been left long upon the ground, a gigantic species of black ant also attacks it. It is particularly noticeable that the insects generally commence upon any abraded or raw surface which the body may present; and, -where there have been a number of superficial scratches, perhaps inflicted in the fatal struggle, or where the dried line left by the cord in hanging has remained uncovered, the gnawings of these creatures into the true skin, completely along the injured tracts, greatly obscure the aspect of the parts, by removing any minute superficial ecchymoses or effusions of blood which may have existed as the only evidence that the injuries were inflicted during life. In a not extremely decomposed body sent to me about a year and a half since, I found that the ants had attacked an oval ulcer on the leg, and had completely eaten away all the tissues within its circumference to the bone.

Fish, Turtle, Rats, and Water Insects are very destructive. to bodies submerged in tanks and rivers. In the first case brought to me for examination in this country, I found that blood appeared to have escaped freely from what seemed to be extensive lacerated contusions of the eye-lids and nose. A little further investigation, however, showed that the parts had been gnawed, probably very soon after submersion, by the fish of a small river, into which the woman had fallen.