Note 21 — L

It is noted by Wilks21 that the travelling grain merchants, who furnished the English army under Cornwallis with grain during the Mysore war, were Brinjāris, and, he adds, “they strenuously objected, first, that no capital execution should take place without the sanction of the regular judicial authority; second, that they should be punishable for murder. The executions to which they demanded assent, or the murders for which they were called to account, had their invariable origin in witchcraft, or the power of communication with evil spirits. If a child sickened, or a wife was inconstant, the sorcerer was to be discovered and punished.” It is recorded by the Rev. J. Cain that many of the Lambādis “confessed that, in former days, it was the custom among them before starting out on a journey to procure a little child, and bury it in the ground up to the shoulders, and then drive their loaded bullocks over the unfortunate victim, and, in proportion to their thoroughly trampling the child to death, so their belief in a successful journey increased. A Lambādi was seen repeating a number of mantrams (magical formulæ) over his patients, and touching their heads at the same time with a book, which was a small edition of the Telugu translation of St. John’s gospel. Neither the physician nor patient could read, and had no idea of the contents of the book.” At the time when human (meriah) sacrifices prevailed in the Vizagapatam Agency tracts, it was the regular duty of Lambādis to kidnap or purchase human beings in the plains, and sell them to the hill tribes for extravagant prices. A person, in order to be a fitting meriah, had to be purchased for a price.