Note 133 — Chapter II · THE CENTRAL MYTH

But it is practically certain that a liturgical resurrection was or had been practised in contemporary cults which had at one time enacted an annual sacrifice of the representative of the God, abstracted in myth as the death of the God himself. And in our own time the survival of an analogous practice has been noted in India. At the installation of the Rajahs of Keonjhur it was anciently the practice for the Rajah to slay a victim: latterly there is a mock-slaying, whereupon the mock-victim disappears. “He must not be seen for three days; then he presents himself to the Rajah as miraculously restored to life.”133