Note 39 — XVIII. ORDURE ALLEGED TO HAVE BEEN USED IN FOOD BY THE ISRAELITES.

Dubois declares that in the Atharvana Veda “bloody sacrifices of victims (human not excepted) are there prescribed.” (“People of India,” London, 1817, p. 341.) And in those parts of India where human sacrifice had been abolished a substitutive ceremony was practised “by forming a human figure of flour paste or clay, which they carry into the temple, and there cut off its head and mutilate it in various ways, in presence of the idols.”—(Idem, p. 490.)