Note 62 — V (continued 2)

In an account of an annual ceremony at Trichinopoly in connection with the festival of Kulumai Amman, who is the guardian deity against epidemics, Bishop Whitehead records62 that “a very fat pujāri (priest) of the Vellāla caste is lifted up above the vast crowd on the arms of two men. Some two thousand kids are then sacrificed, one after the other. The blood of the first eight or nine is collected in a large silver vessel holding about a quart, and handed up to the pujāri, who drinks it. Then, as the throat of each kid is cut, the animal is handed up to him, and he sucks, or pretends to suck the blood out of the carcase.”