Note 104 — CHAPTER 7

The Mahabharata describes this warfare against the snakes literally: of which, in one attack, he seized and made a burnt-offering (hom) of twenty thousand. It is surprising that the Hindu will accept these things literally. It might be said he had but a choice of difficulties, and that it would be as impossible for any human being to make the barbarous sacrifice of twenty thousand of his species, as it would be difficult to find twenty thousand snakes for the purpose. The author’s knowledge of what barbarity will inflict leaves the fact of the human sacrifice, though not perhaps to this extent, not even improbable. In 1811 his duties called him to a survey amidst the ravines of the Chambal, the tract called Gujargarh, a district inhabited by the Gujar tribe. Turbulent and independent, like the sons of Esau, their hand against every man and every man’s hand against them, their nominal prince, Surajmall, the Jāt chief of Bharatpur, pursued exactly the same plan towards the population of these villages, whom they captured in a night attack, that Janamejaya did to the Takshaks: he threw them into pits with combustibles, and actually thus consumed them! This occurred not three-quarters of a century ago.