Note 119.2 — Chapter IV · Notes

Mrs. Leslie Milne, Shans at Home (London, 1910), p. 192. Among the Shans “in a case of capital punishment more than one executioner assisted, and each tried to avoid giving the fatal blow, so that the sin of killing the culprit should fall upon several, each bearing a part. The unfortunate man was killed by reason of repeated sword cuts, no one of which was sufficient to kill him, and died rather from loss of blood than from one fatal blow” (Mrs. Leslie Milne, op. cit. pp. 191 sq.). Perhaps each executioner feared to be haunted by his victim’s ghost if he actually despatched him.